Parental Guidance
by shipperofinsanity
Summary: Death had never beckoned so welcomingly. Injuries and heartbreaks and grief beyond despair is what Blaine suffers through daily, until so much as one interaction with a friend leaks it all, and within the space of two weeks, his life is changed forever.


It didn't really matter how hard Blaine worked to hide it. It didn't really matter that he was only ever in his uniform at school, that he used Glee Club as an excuse for going to practices, that he made sure he looked exactly the same as when he left when he came back. It didn't really matter that his uniform was always in the very bottom of his gym bag, which he filled with other clothing daily to keep said uniform hidden. And it didn't really matter how much of the truth he left out, he always felt like he was lying; it didn't really matter how careful he was, because eventually, something would slip.

In this case, that something was Tina.

It wasn't her fault, of course not, but when she arrived in her uniform to pick Blaine up for a late-night practice and he'd been in his room getting prepared, his father had answered the door. As soon as he heard the door open, Blaine had shoved the uniform into his bag quickly and bolted from his room, dashing towards the front of the house so he could leave before he was questioned. But his father had already started.

"Who are you?" he asked Tina suspiciously, narrowing his eyes and frowning.

"Tina Cohen-Chang," she answered, and Blaine really wished he'd been smart enough to tell about her and the others in Glee Club when he'd first joined.

"Are you his girlfriend?" his father had specified.

"No," Tina said slowly, unsure of how to proceed. "I'm in Glee Club with him. Did he not -"

"Hey, Tina," Blaine hurried, standing just behind his father but not daring to push past for fear of physical harm that she might see and report. "Thanks for coming, you ready?"

"Did you not tell him about me?" she asked bluntly.

"But you're a Cheerio, and Cheerios hate the Glee Club," his father persisted, irritated, looking at her uniform. "That only leaves his girlfriend."

"Girlfriend is a lot less likely than a New Direction/Cheerio mix," Tina snapped, and though Blaine widened his eyes and shook his head and mouthed 'No!' she continued. "Which we both happen to be."

Blaine saw only the back of his father's head, but apparently his expression was thunderous, because Tina's face changed to one of fear and she took a step back, teetering on the stairs to the porch.

"He's not a Cheerleader, that's for girls," his father growled. And then his hand shot back and grabbed the color of Blaine's shirt, just missing his bowtie, and yanked him forward so he nearly stumbled over him. "Glee Club was bad enough, and he'll get past this gay phase."

"_Phase_?" Tina said, outrage taking place of her fear.

"Tina," Blaine warned her.

"Sexuality is not a _phase_," Tina went on anyways, her eyes burning though nowhere near like he knew his fathers' would be at her words. "Sexuality is a determined and non-debatable part of who you are and who you are to be with and there's no changing it. And Cheerleading is for more than just girls, it's for anyone who wants to cheer, and Glee Club is, like, the best thing that ever happen to your son, so I wouldn't call it _bad_."

"Stop!" Blaine choked as his father's fist tightened, straining his shirt's fabric around his neck so it nearly cut off his air. Her eyes finally flickered to him, and when she saw what was going on, she froze in her place.

His father slammed the door, whirled around, and sent him flying sideways with a slap louder than any note he'd ever belted out.

Blaine reached a hand up to his cheek, which felt like it might actually have welts this time, and wondered how he'd cover this one up. His dad didn't hit him often - well, with words yes, but not with his hands - but when he did he hit _hard_.

"I have had it up to here with this gay crap!" his father yelled at him, eyes so like Blaine's but so hateful glaring at him, raising his hand far above where Blaine's head would have been even if he'd have been standing. "You can't be gay, not really! Get over this disgusting phase and date a girl, for Christ's sake, and stop being such a damn girl yourself! Cheerleading? Glee Club? Theatre and singing, I should have stopped this a long time ago!" He actually spat at Blaine then, and he flinched back just in time or it would've hit his face. "This is wrong and horrible and you will stop it right now, this instant!"

"I can't!" Blaine pleaded, not daring to stand again for fear of the floor coming back to him quickly. "I'm sorry!"

"_Stop lying to me!_"

"I'm not!"

"_GET OUT!_"

And his father swooped down and grabbed his left forearm, picked him up visibly, set him on his feet with so much force his knees gave out, yanked the door open and jerked him through it so he nearly landed on Tina, who immediately dropped the phone she was speaking through to grab him and help him stand on his own again. All the while, Blaine gripped his gym bag as tightly as possible, not letting go of a single thing inside of it because if he did his dad might destroy them and then he'd have nothing. "Are you okay, oh my God!" Tina exclaimed, touching the mark on his face with horror. "Blaine, what the hell?! Should I call the po-"

"No, run!" He sputtered, and tugged her along with him as a vase his mother had paid good money for flew toward them with the propelled speed given by a high-school baseball pitcher.

* * *

"This isn't legal!" Tina huffed as they ran, Blaine's hand cuffing her wrist, away from his house. "We can get him arrested, you're going to be bruised -"

"He's done worse before, right now we need to get away," Blaine huffed back, moving quickly to Tina's car, which he recognized sitting on the side of the road about a block away from his house. He skidded to a stop beside it and leaned on it, arching his back over his gym bag, which he placed behind him as he caught his breath. He was by no means safe yet, they still had to actually get out of the neighborhood, but he could rest for a moment. Tina was freaking out, that much was obvious, and Blaine's mind was still reeling by how public his father had been about the abuse he'd threatened Blaine to keep secret for years.

"What do you mean, he's done worse before?!" Tina trilled. "How many times has he hit you?!"

"A fair few, and we need to go," he answered, jerking open the passenger side door and jumping inside, beckoning her to the driver's seat. It took her a moment of deliberation, but then she moved swiftly, getting in the car herself and turning the key so the engine started.

"Where to?" she asked, slightly more in control now.

"Practice," he replied, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Pretending to be fine when he wasn't used to be a specialty of his, before he'd ruined his relationship with Kurt and broken a part of him that could do that. But it returned now, because Kurt was still his best friend and he still had him and so he still had that part that hid when he was hurting.

"We can't go to practice, Blaine, your cheek is swelling in the shape of a hand," she snapped, stomping on the accelerator and pushing them forward, driving away from the house until it was out of sight. "We'll call Coach Sylvester and tell her what happened, and then go to my house and get you cleaned up."

"Are you _insane_?" Blaine demanded, turning to her with incredulity. "We can't tell her what happened! We can't tell anyone! We'll go to practice and I'll lie about it and then I'll go home like always."

"You're the one who's insane!" she yelled at him, braking forcefully at a stop sign and then zipping past again. "Your dad is abusing you for what, being gay? It's not like you can stop being gay, Blaine! You need to tell someone!"

"He's been doing it for years, and I'm fine!" he shouted back. "Look at me Tina, besides this stupid hand print, I'm fine!"

"No, you're not fine!" she argued. "You're not okay, either! You've been crying and running away and hating yourself and nobody's said anything because they're all too busy with their own little problems to notice yours. _I_ noticed, Blaine."

"Then why didn't you _do_ anything?" he asked, his voice breaking on the emphasis and falling to a whisper. "Why didn't you help?"

"I didn't know how," she responded seriously. "But I do now, and the first step is telling someone."

"Tina -"

"What did he tell you to make you keep it secret?" she asked, disbelief in her voice. "Did he threaten you? Yell at you? What did he do?"

The answer was on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it back. "Nothing."

"Blaine!" She was angry again.

"Hesaidhe'dkillme."

The words came out fast and rushed and slippery, sliding out of his mouth before he stopped them, and Tina braked so hard and so quickly that their necks snapped forward and then slammed back into their seats. Blaine bit his tongue, fury - at himself, at his father, at life - rising up in his eyes in the form of tears. And then Tina was looking at him with the most horrified expression he'd ever seen, besides the one his parents had worn when he'd come out to them, and she was leaning across the seats to hold him as the tears spilled over. He leaned into her, and didn't bother holding back anymore. What was the point? She'd already seen and now she knew what was going on, what he'd been hiding, what he'd not told anyone. Whenever Kurt had come over in the past, he'd made sure his parents weren't going to be home - they went on trips frequently, as if they couldn't stand being around him for too long - and now it had all gone to waste.

It didn't really matter how careful he was; something was going to slip.

And in this case, that something was Tina.

And then she was shifting as she pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jacket, and she was dialing, and he didn't care anymore. "Coach Sylvester?" she said, after a pause of near-silence, in which Blaine's crying was the only sound. "Blaine and I won't be at practice today." A beat, and the speaker formed words Blaine couldn't make out. "We were coming, but, you see, when I went to pick up Blaine, his dad found out he was a Cheerio and hit him. Apparently he's been doing it for years."

More silence. Shame and guilt arose and swallowed a bit of his heart again.

"Do you want us to?" Pause. "Yes, we'll be right there." A longer pause. "No, actually, his dad threatened to kill him if he let anyone know."

Blaine choked on his own sob.

"Yeah, I know." And now Tina's voice was thick, too. "We'll be there." And she hung up. She turned to her and put both arms around him again, squeezing him, one hand petting his gelled hair soothingly as he wept as quietly as he could into her shoulder. "Coach Sylvester wants to talk to you about it," Tina told him quietly, swallowing with obvious difficulty around a lump in her throat. "She wants to help."

"It's n-not that b-bad," he attempted one last rebuttal and failed miserably, trembling pathetically in his friend's arms.

"Yes, it is," she refuted, her voice hushed and sad and scared and angry all at the same time - everything Blaine was, but muted.

* * *

"Coach?" Tina asked, moving into Sue's line of sight in the doorway. She was in her uniform and red McKinley High jacket, and her hair was up in a tight ponytail, as it should have been. Her nose was red from the cold and her cheeks were flushed as scarlet as her swollen eyes, which had tear tracks dripping to her chin. But Sue was more interested in the boy behind her.

Very few times in her life did Sue allow herself to care for someone. No matter how much she truly hated people, there were exceptions. Her sister she had loved from the start, and other people hating her had made Sue start hating other people. And then Will Schuester somehow managed to worm his way into her affection in a way that both repulsed and relieved her, and then even Sharon Beiste, which her domestic abuse story, had made her place in Sue's heart. Sue cared for the well-being of the Glee kids, no matter how much she initially despised them or tried to make their lives miserable - she'd had a soft spot for Porcelain for much longer than she cared to admit - and though Tina was crying and that did bother her, the fact that half of Anderson's face was already bruising in what was clearly the shape of a hand made her heart skip a beat, and she stared. "Anderson," she said quietly after a moment, and those eyes usually the color of honey looked up at her, a murky film of darkness now, and they were still carrying tears. She stood slowly, unsure of how to proceed, and Tina stepped in and to the side so it was just Anderson standing there.

She moved toward him carefully, not to upset him, and when it became clear he didn't want her any closer, she raised her hands to both sides of his face, and he averted his eyes as she turned his head right and then left, surveying the damage.

"How many times has this happened before, and for how long?" she asked, her voice nearing as tender but authoritative as it had been raising her sister.

"I don't know, and since the middle of my Freshman year." His voice, usually so lyrical, even when not singing, was strained and cracked. Sue inhaled with a hissing sound and slid her hands to his shoulders, looking him square in the eye.

"You need to stay out of that house," she told him. "You need to get your things and leave. I'm going to report h-"

"You can't, don't!" Blaine interrupted, panic flowing, looking back up at her in terror.

"Why not?" she asked, morbid curiosity burning.

"He threatened to kill him if anyone found out," Tina answered when it was clear that Blaine couldn't speak.

For a moment, everything took on a red hue, and then it was just normal, not blinding, anger that was bubbling into her chest. "He won't hurt you again," she promised him fiercely. "He will not touch you. Not while you've got me. Understood?"

Blaine's bottom jaw fell open the tiniest bit, and then he shut it and swallowed before nodding, blinking with haste to fight back the hot saltwater.

"I don't understand," Tina piped up again, "How does Cooper not know? And if he does, why hasn't he done anything? You two love each other, you're brothers."

Blaine was already shaking his head. "I never let him know," he said, "I couldn't. My father loves him and he loves my dad, I couldn't just… ruin the kind of relationship I want with my father because I don't have it and he does."

"Tell Cooper," Sue said, turning to Tina.

"No!" Blaine nearly shouted, and then quieted meekly again. "I've got to do it, he won't believe anyone else."

Sue studied him for a moment. "Alright, I believe you. But you're staying with me tonight, Anderson, and I will not have you going back to that house or even neighborhood without me or another adult."

"The Hummels would probably let him stay with them," Tina said. "Should I call them?"

Blaine opened his mouth to argue.

He closed it along with his eyes and slumped against the door frame.

He put his head in his hands.

Without a second thought, Sue wrapped her arms around him, and though it shocked her when he responded by doing the same to her, it made her feel a bit better to know she could help at least a small amount. "They're like your family, aren't they?" she murmured to him quietly. "Those Hudson-Hummels."

Blaine nodded against her chest, swallowing loudly in a gulp.

"We'll talk to them," she whispered, "We'll let them know."

Tina took out her phone awkwardly and held up her hands as if to say 'What should I do?'

Sue released her hold on Blaine and beckoned Tina over as she guided him to a chair. "Call Finn," she told Tina, "And get him and Burt and Carole down here right now. I'll call Will."

"Mr. Schue?" Blaine muttered against the hands that held his head up, his elbows resting on his knees and his back and neck bent forward in a slouch. "Burt, Finn…"

"Do you want to call Cooper now, or after?" Sue asked tenderly, which made her feel vulnerable, so she tried to scowl (she failed and it ended up as a grimace).

"After."

Tina was holding the phone to hear ear and Sue reached for the one on her desk. She'd told the Cheerios to go home early; they'd asked why and she'd screamed at them to get out. Whether she liked it or not, she was now emotionally invested in Blaine's faring, and having a bunch of Cheerleaders there, his friends or not, wouldn't help him. She watched Blaine intently as she dialed Will's home number. Tina had started talking in low tones before anyone picked up on Sue's line, but then the voice of Emma Pillsbury filled the phone. "Hello?"

"It's Sue," she said, and as hard as she tried to sound normal, her voice was too scratchy for that. "Will needs to come down to the school immediately."

"What now, Sue?" Emma sighed, irritated.

"Blaine Anderson needs him."

A pause. "What's wrong with Blaine?"

Blaine looked up from his seat, wide-eyed and near tears once more, and nodded his permission.

"We've just now found out that his father's been abusing him for the better part of four years," Sue choked out bitterly.

"Oh, my God… WILL!" Emma shouted, her voice muffled as she turned away from the phone. "We'll be right there, is it okay if I come, too?" she asked, breathless, sounds of moving and shouting going on suddenly.

Sue looked at Blaine with raised eyebrows. He nodded again. "Yes, you can come. And hurry."

And then she hung up and reached across her desk so her palm was facing upwards, a clear invitation. Blaine's hand found hers, and she squeezed it gently.

He dropped his head again and held on like she was the only thing keeping him from falling into an abyss.

"They're on their way," Tina reported from the back of the room, where she was leaning against a file cabinet. "Finn says he's got some clothes if you need them. They might be a bit big, but they'll do. I didn't tell them what was going on, I just said you needed them all right away. Is that alright?"

"F-Fine," he stuttered, taking a breath in so shakily Sue feared he might shatter. "Could use a family that d-doesn't hate me right now."

* * *

When Blaine started crying again and Sue (when the hell did she become so caring?) started comforting him, Tina slipped out, knowing that soon enough she wouldn't be welcome. But she dialed again before she walked too far away, her footsteps echoing in the empty hallway, with its bright lights contrasting with the outside darkness. A late-night practice, a late-night discovery, a late-night dawn of understanding and horribleness. When she woke up this morning, she'd had no idea this would be what she went to sleep thinking about.

She was nearing her locker when the call picked up. "Hey, Tina," said a familiar high voice casually. "What's up? You usually text instead of call."

"Hi, Kurt," she said. "I need to tell you something and you might want to sit down."

The next thing she heard was, "Is Blaine okay?"

She took a deep breath. "Sit down, Kurt."

"_Is he okay_?"

"Sit _down_!"

There was a sound like sheets rustling. "There, I'm sitting! Now what happened to Blaine?"

She looked around before leaning on her locker, her voice reverberating in the stilled air around her, thin but compressing somehow; schools at night had always seemed creepy to her, but this one right now just felt very, very sad. "Is Rachel there with you? You might need her when I've told you."

"Oh, God," he said, and she could hear he was expecting the worst from how his voice shook. "Yes, she's here. Should I call her in, or -?"

"Actually, yes, she should probably know, too."

It took a minute more or so, and then Tina was on speaker phone and Rachel was sitting next to Kurt on his bed. "What about something happening to Blaine?" she asked.

"You two need to promise me that you won't do anything stupid after you know, like come down here," Tina demanded.

"You're scaring me, Tina," Kurt quivered.

"We promise," Rachel said suspiciously. "Why?"

Tina took another deep breath. "You guys should be some of the first to know. I'll call the others after you, but you two first, specifically Kurt. You know that Blaine is openly gay, right? And he came out around the middle of his Freshman year, back before Dalton."

"Before his Sadie Hawkins dance," Kurt muttered, and when Rachel asked, "What?" he said, "Nothing. Go on, Tina."

"His dad is homophobic… like, strongly homophobic," Tina told them, willing her voice to remain strong. "And so when he came out, his dad hated him, and started… hitting him."

The reactions were to be expected. Rachel's gasp/exclamation of "No!" as well as Kurt's silence had equal effects; Tina felt immediately guilty for telling people without Blaine's explicit permission and horrified at herself for telling Kurt, who she knew loved Blaine despite their bumps in the road. But she had to continue.

And so she explained to them how Blaine's father had found out about his being a Cheerio due to her, and how he'd slapped Blaine hard enough that he was bruising, and how Blaine had broken down under the stress of having someone know about what was going on while his father had threatened to kill him if that very thing happened. "We're getting him out of the house and reporting his parents. Coach Sylvester is letting him stay with her, if Burt and Finn and Carole don't take him in."

"My dad?" Kurt whispered.

"Yes, your dad. They're on their way, Blaine said they're like his family, and he could really use one right now. Cooper doesn't know, he kept it from him. I haven't told your dad or the rest of them what's going on," she said. "They know something's wrong and that he needs a place to stay, but that's it."

"All the times I went over to his house," Kurt breathed. "His parents were never there. He must have planned that, made sure they couldn't meet me. All that stage makeup I saw, he must have used that to cover the bruises. The boxing, the acting, it all… it all makes so much sense, and this is… why didn't he _tell_ me?"

"Kurt," Rachel squeaked, and there was more rustling; Tina could almost feel Rachel holding Kurt as he cried. Everyone as crying tonight.

There were voices, suddenly, and accompanying footsteps, to the hallway on her right. "Finn?" she called out, holding the phone away from her.

"Tina!" came the response.

"I've got to go," Tina hurried into the speaker, "but you promised not to come down here. I'll get him to talk to you, I swear, but I've got to go. Your family's here. Bye, Kurt. Take care of him, Rachel." And she pressed End just as the Hudson-Hummels rounded the corner.

"Tina," Finn sighed upon laying eyes on her. "What's going on with Blaine?"

Tina shook her head. Though she'd just told Kurt, that was different - Kurt was the one person Blaine might have ever considered telling and she knew it. She had no right to tell Finn. So instead she beckoned them to follow her and remained silent through their questions as she led them to Sue's office. The noise grew louder as they approached until they reached it, where they all stood frozen in their tracks.

The scene was horrible. Blaine was still sitting, except now he was outright sobbing, trying to speak through tears, touching the ugly wound on his face, blubbering an crying and gasping for breath, and Sue was holding him - and he was sitting on a chair that had been pushed directly next to Sue's, where she could put her arms around him and let him cry. Tina wondered if this what was Sue Sylvester caring looked like - like it hurt her to feel anything but rage and dislike. Because she was obviously in pain over Blaine's suffering, and though she listened in silence to his hysterics, she seemed to also be understanding (but it was impossible to make anything out).

Until a few certain words hung in the air, choked and broken and breathless: "I don't want him to hurt me!"

Carole put her hands over her mouth. "Blaine, man," Finn said, moving toward him slowly and calling attention to himself. All eyes turned to him and Blaine tried to silence himself, but he ended up just trembling harder with the effort. "What's wrong?" He knelt beside his friend. "Who did that to your face?"

"Blaine?" Burt asked, his voice using the gentility Tina'd only ever heard him use with Kurt. "Bud, what happened?"

There came a stampeding of footsteps and clicking sounds rushing down the hall, and they all turned to look; and then there was Will, looking wildly rushing, with a panicked and scared Emma at his side. "We're here, we're here!" he said, pushing into the room and dropping at Blaine's side, like Finn. "Is he okay?" he asked Sue. "Are you okay?" he turned to Blaine.

"Should I go?" Tina asked quietly. Sue looked at her in a quiet moment of deliberation, and then shook her head.

Tina closed the door that everyone had just filed through, and braced herself for what she was sure was going to be the worst conversation of her life.

* * *

It was around the middle of the night when Blaine finally had things sorted out, physically, mentally and emotionally. Around the middle of the explanation, which kept getting more and more detailed and they got increasingly desperate for information, Blaine had looked up from his hands to see the different reactions. Ms. Pillsbury had been wringing her hands and looking at the hand print on his face, probably hating how uneven it was and at the same time feeling guilty about focusing on that part. Mr. Schue had been running his hands over his hair, something Blaine had noticed he tended to do when he was stressed out and upset but trying to calm himself down. Carole had started crying, having not yet removed her hand from over her mouth. Finn had rested his forehead on the arm of Blaine's chair, his hand tightening into a fist occasionally when Blaine described something with more detail that usual. Sue had just sat there and stared at him with a caring expression he'd have never thought she possessed, waiting for him to fall apart again so she would comfort him. Tina stood in the back of the room, shaking her head sometimes and other times patting Carole's back reassuringly. Burt had gotten angrier and angrier, glaring not so much at Blaine but at the air in front of him furiously. And Blaine had, gradually, slowly, the words flowing as answers to questions and explanations to assumptions, gained control as he started thinking about his situation analytically. He considered every tiny detail and found that taking it into pieces in a scientific way made everything as a whole seem less horrible.

And so he was the only one, at the end of the explanation, who managed not have a blank and calm expression.

"Is he still there?" Burt asked, after a stretch of silence in which everyone absorbed what they'd just been told.

"Don't," Blaine told him forcefully, and Burt looked a him in surprise. "I know you'd like to hurt him, but it'll do nothing but get you charged with assault."

"He threatened to kill you!" Burt exploded, slamming his fist onto the wall beside him, making everyone jump at the resounding thumping sound. "Why is it everyone threatens to kill my family?!"

"Family?" Blaine repeated. He'd used the word so casually, as if it were a given fact, when in fact is was shocking.

"Yes, family!" Burt hurled at him, not intending to be so harsh. "Future Son-in-Law counts! That makes you family!"

"Love makes you family," Carole added quietly. She reached up quietly to take Burt's hand, and after a moment, he continued, calmer.

"Where's he going to stay? We're remodeling our living room, so we have no couch, and with Sam staying we've got no more beds," Burt said.

"He can have my bed, I'll find a place," Finn volunteered.

"No need, Finn, he can stay with us," Will piped up, looking to Emma for permission and getting a nodded affirmative. "We've got a couch he can stay on."

"For the night, maybe," Sue chided, "But what about after that? He can't go back to that place again and a couch won't do it forever; he'll stay with me."

"You've got a spare room?" Will asked.

"Y-… um, possibly," she said. "Robin's sleeping in it in her crib, but it's still got the bed and dresser that came with it. Would that be okay for you, Anderson?"

None of them had noticed how Blaine had sat back in his chair slowly, staring at them each in turn as they spoke, an odd feeling coarsing through him. It was entirely new to him, something strange and just a tiny but familiar. The best way to describe would be to compare it to when your foot falls asleep, and then wakes up; how the increased blood flow makes everything seem so much more active and warm and how it just spreads all over until there are only a few tiny, tickling pricks left over. That feeling started in his gut and slowly moved out until he was wiggling his toes and fingers with it. He looked at his limbs in amazement; they didn't seem any different. The only time he'd felt remotely like this was when he'd last hugged Cooper, and that had been very, very different. And then he looked back up at Sue. "Sorry," he said, "I think I just realized I'm not actually alone. What was that?"

"Of course you're not," Tina spoke, shaking her head once more and taking a step farther into the crowded office. "You got all of us behind you, Blaine. You don't have to be silent anymore."

He gazed at her in wonderment. The atmosphere, which had been as heavy as a group of elephants just a moment ago, was not breathable and light, comfortable and actually somewhat inspiring; everyone looked at him with expressions torn between fondness and exasperation at his just now realizing that he had them. "Whoa," he said after a brief pause. "I… is… whoa… is this what…"

Will chuckled, and though it was strained, it was genuine when he smiled at Blaine. He patted his shoulder once and then rubbed it soothingly. "Is this what?" he prompted Blaine to continue.

Blaine exhaled in a gust and found that the corners of his mouth were twitching up. "It sounds cheesy," he warned, "but is this what it feels like to be a part of a family that wants you?"

"Blaine," Emma crooned softly, reaching down and stroking his hair. Tina threw her hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head and Finn grinned at him - Burt just raised his eyebrows as if to say 'Really?' and Carole held out her hand to him, which he took. And Sue actually smiled at him.

"So," she said, "will sleeping in the same room with Robin be okay with you?"

"If it's okay with you and Robin," Blaine answered, still struck by how these people actually loved him. He'd known he'd been their friend before, but they really loved him.

"But he'll stay with us tonight," Emma demanded, petting him again and laughing a laugh as shaky as her hands, which steadied only when placed on him. "How are you so calm?" she asked him gently.

Blaine grimaced. "I'm almost four years into this, I'm good at dealing with it by now."

Emma looked like she'd slapped herself and slowly retracted her hand. "Right," she said briskly, trying to fix the minor mistake she'd made. "Well, we'll get you to our place, and clean you up, and you'll sleep, and then tomorrow you'll go to Sue's."

"What about my things?" he asked, looking around. "I mean, I don't want to be pushy," he apologized, "but I have a lot of stuff in that house, many of which I don't want to get rid of."

Carole took a deep breath. "When are your father's work hours?" she asked.

"During the school day," Blaine replied right away. "From eight 'till three."

"Forget that, let's go now," Burt hastened them.

"Relax," Finn told him seriously. "That's a terrible idea. We should report him first, and when the officials take care of it, we'll get Blaine's stuff. It may take a while, but I'm sure Sam and I can loan you some clothes," he offered.

"Good idea," Will told Finn, and held his hand up for a high five, which was given promptly.

"Alright, Anderson," Sue told Blaine, sitting back in her chair. "I will see you tomorrow. Right now, you should go home with the Will."

"What about Cooper?" Blaine's worries surfaced. "What do I tell him? And Kurt?"

"I took care of Kurt," Tina admitted, and Blaine looked at her with a little bit of bitterness. "And Rachel. She's comforting him right now, but he was pretty freaked out. Do you want to -"

"Phone," Blaine demanded flatly, holding out his hand for her to place it in. She did, holding up her hands apologetically as he dialed. They all began to disperse around him, talking in low voices in one big cluster, letting him be by himself but not truly alone.

Good. He didn't think he wanted to feel alone again.

* * *

Kurt had been pacing back and forth in his apartment consistently for a good two hours before the phone rang again. He'd refused to let Rachel make any calls for fear she'd stop one for coming through, and right then she'd been sitting watching him pace, begging him to calm down, telling him it would be okay, asking him to come sit by her. It's how she'd occupied her time since he started pacing. His legs moved robotically in their movement; he might as well have been trying to wear a hole in the floor.

And then the shrill ringing of his cell phone pierced through the air and his breath caught before he lunged toward it on the coffee table, jumping too hard and landing on his ass, his fingers wrapped around the device. He had answered it within milliseconds. "Tina!" he greeted, trying to let his voice down to a register where it could be heard by humans.

"No, it's me," said a voice far too familiar to be Tina's.

"Blaine!" Kurt corrected himself, overwhelming relief overtaking him and allowing his blood to unfreeze. "Thank God, are you okay?! What happened, are you hurt, did he hurt you, why didn't you tell me -"

"Hey hey hey," Blaine soothed him, using a voice Kurt knew all too well worked wonders on his nerves. "Relax, okay? I'm fine. He slapped me is all, I have a bit of a bruise, but I'm alright."

"Oh dear," Kurt flustered, "oh gosh, oh god, oh dear, I was so scared -"

"I'm _okay_," Blaine emphasized.

"Will you stay okay?" he insisted. "Where are you staying? What's going on? Have you called the police?"

"Mr. Schue is reporting my father right now," he assured him, "And I'm staying with him and Miss Pillsbury tonight, and then after that I'm staying with Coach Sylvester."

"Did my dad not offer?" Kurt was irritated.

"No, he tried!" Blaine said. "He tried, he did, but they're redecorating the living room so they have no couch, and with Sam staying there they've got no extra beds."

"They're _redecorating_?" Kurt trilled. "No, they are not! I did that living room myself! They'll ruin it!"

And then Blaine was laughing his ass off, and Kurt could see in his mind how he'd duck his head and smile widely and just bring his knees up to his chest and hug them there as he shook with guffaws, and all the panic and anxiety and concern that had been building up slid away like water on slanted glass, and he laughed, too.

* * *

"Poor kid," Will remarked as he shut the bedroom door behind himself. He'd made sure Blaine was properly situated on the couch, which he had never been more glad was extra-wide. Blaine had showered and gotten into some of Will's old pajamas - Will had never been more shocked to see anyone without hair product, he really did look a bit like Medusa - and was now on the couch, between a pillow and a blanket, already snoring softly. Emma looked up from the bed, where she was rubbing her nightly lotion onto her hands. She smiled a small, sad smile. She'd set to the task of treating the bruise on Blaine's face, and the swelling had already started going down when his head had hit the pillow. "I can't believe he never told anyone."

"Me either," Emma agreed, beckoning him over. "But he's going to be okay now. Sue's reported his dad, and he's safe here with us. Cooper's flying in and Kurt's talking to him again and he's not going to hurt anymore - don't you think we should let him be happy?"

"We should." But he wasn't completely satisfied. "I just… it shouldn't have taken him until we were deciding where he'd stay to realize we actually do love him."

"Think about it," Emma said, setting the lotion bottle to the side. "His dad stopped loving him for religious reasons, and his mom obviously had nothing against it, and his brother never had a clue, and he couldn't even tell his boyfriend for fear he'd be killed for doing so. No matter how loved he was and how much we told him, do you really think he would have believed us? If the people closest to him didn't care, how was he supposed to think we did?"

"It's horrible," Will blurted, not knowing how to respond. "Parents are supposed to love their kids, and how can you not love Blaine? He carries around juice boxes and dresses up like a superhero, he wears bowties, he's so supportive of everyone, and even though he's been dealing with abuse that's both verbal and physical for years I've never once heard him say a bad thing to anyone that didn't need it said to, and even then he was sorry. He's the perfect kid, how can you hate that?"

"They don't hate him, they hate a part of him," Emma specified. "They hate homosexuality, and he happens to be a homosexual. It's ignorance and it's awful and it needs to stop, but it happens every day. Luckily, it won't happen for him anymore."

"I just wish we could help more," he confessed.

"You can always help, but you can't always be a superhero, Will." She looked at him pointedly, and brought the blanket up over her, snuggling into the sheets, burrowing for warmth. "He's going to be okay."

"Yeah," he said simply, and nodded once in acceptance before burrowing next to her, letting her rest her head and hand on his chest as he threw the sheets over them both.

* * *

Burt looked around the plaster and cardboard and paint buckets and boxes in their living room and sighed. He trusted Will to take care of the kid, but he'd feel better if he were under his own roof. Finn was on the phone with Kurt behind him, and Carole was still holding his hand.

The fact that Blaine had had no idea that he was part of their family was appalling. Of course he was. He'd screwed up, yeah, but that wouldn't make them hate him. He'd been disappointed, sure, but he still loved the kid. Blaine had made Kurt happier than even Burt had been able to since Kurt's mother died. That made him family. The Future Son-in-Law business made him family. And, as Carole pointed out, love made him family. How had he missed that?

No, he knew how. He knew he shouldn't have had to miss it like he did. Love was so foreign to the kid he couldn't even recognize it, anywhere but with Kurt… the corners of Burt's mouth tugged up a bit at how only Kurt had been able to make Blaine know love again. And then he frowned at how much it must have hurt both of them to lose that.

"Come on, you've got to rest," Carole told him, pulling him in further, toward their room.

"Bye, bro," Finn said, ending the conversation he'd been having since they left the school. "Kurt says he misses everyone," He announced, "and I talked him out of coming down here."

"Good," Burt smiled, "Airplane tickets are expensive and he needs the money."

"For what?"

"You know how he shops."

* * *

How did he get back here? Hadn't it just been settled that he wouldn't be coming back? Was someone with him? He'd just been in Mr. Schue's living room, hadn't he? Yes, he was certain of it, he'd just been there, falling asleep. So why was he suddenly standing in his bedroom?

And who was barging down the hall? Was it Burt, or Sue? Someone he trusted? But he knew it wasn't. He'd heard that approach several times before, and on some rare occasions he wasn't conscious to hear those footsteps walk away again. He stepped backwards in a reflex movement. Nothing made sense. How did he get here, and would his dad burst through that door and -

Yes, yes, he would.

When Blaine eventually woke up, he did so screaming.

* * *

"Blaine! _Blaine_!" Will shouted, his hands tightening on the boy's shoulders, shaking them so his head rattled, but he still didn't wake up. "Blaine, wake up, Blaine, come on, Blaine!" Blaine's skin was paler than Will had ever seen it, his thin curls matted down on his forehead and flopping about wildly as he was shaken; and his screams didn't stop, cries close to an infant's coming out of his mouth, uneven and breaking, incomprehensible pleas escaping his chapped lips. "Blaine!"

"Wake up sweetheart, it's okay!" Emma begged him, grabbing his hand and squeezing as hard as she could, fat tears rolling down her soft cheeks from her doe-like eyes. "It's okay!"

And then his eyes flew open and Will let go of him immediately so he slumped back onto the couch, his screams cutting off, the only thing passing his lips now huge gulps of hoarse air. Will would have asked him if he were alright, if not for the fact that when Blaine saw him he cried out once more, wild terror present in his eyes as he tore his hand from Emma's grasp and tried to back away uselessly, his limbs flailing awkwardly on the couch before he recognized the two of them. He let go of the breath he'd taken in loudly and hung his head back behind him. "Oh my God, no, please, no…"

"Blaine, sweetie," Emma said tenderly, reaching for his hand again. He flinched away, though he knew who she was, before relaxing and letting her take it; Will hated seeing him so raw. He'd seen him scared, of course, he'd gone with the rest of Glee Club to the hospital when his eye had been injured, but that was entirely different from how vulnerable the boy in front of him right then was.

_And he really is just a boy,_ Will realized, _Not the leader he pretends to be or the man he wants to be. He's just a scared kid who's been trying too hard for too long._

"Sorry," Blaine breathed. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"Wake us?" Will asked, sitting down at his feet on the couch. "Don't be sorry, it's not your fault you had a nightmare."

"Yes, yes it is," he disagreed slowly, a fake smile creeping onto his dried lips. "Can I get some water, please?"

"Absolutely," Emma answered, and she gave him a last reassuringly smile and then worried look, still crying, as she went to fetch him a glass.

"How is it your fault?" Will asked. "With what you've gone through, I'm surprised you don't have nightmares all the time."

"I do," Blaine said, and then amended, "I did." He coughed an empty cough and ran his fingers through his hair to get it off his face. "Every night, I used to. And then I met Kurt." He grimaced. "Sorry, too much?"

"No, not too much," Will shook his head. "Talking about this really can help, buddy."

"Well, it's just…" Blaine seemed hesitant. "I met Kurt, and I knew he was spying on us, but he was so obvious about it, I just… I think he kind of wanted to get caught. And then when we sat him down, he asked if we were going to beat him up, and I was just… I couldn't tell, at the time, whether I was shocked at his words or a bit too understanding."

"And now that you look back on it?" Will pressed.

"I was shocked at how much I understood," Blaine admitted, combining the two. "And then he asked if we were all gay, and we laughed, and I said I was but the other guys had girlfriends, and… and he just sat back when we told him that Dalton had a Zero-Tolerance Bullying Policy that was enforced and started to cry and it broke my heart before I knew anything but his name."

Will hadn't heard this story before, and a bit of him that belonged to Kurt, like a bit of him belonged to everyone in or around Glee, started to throb. Emma came back into the room, but stayed silent. Blaine wrung his hands softly as he continued speaking, his eyes getting farther away. Emma sat down by his side and listened, holding onto the cup of water for now.

"And then I asked the other two to give us a minute," Blaine went on. "And Kurt just kind of broke down when I told him about how I'd been bullied and how I'd gone to Dalton and how I ran away from my problems and before I so much as knew his age I was considering telling him about my father." He shook his head sadly. "But I didn't, because he needed help, so I helped him. I texted him things like 'Courage' and made sure that I was always there to talk to when he needed me; I got him coffee, I got him gifts, I made sure that no matter where he was, he was happy. And being there for someone else, staying strong for someone else that I really cared about and not just for me, made it so much easier.

"He needed me, and I needed him and I needed him to need me. It didn't feel like I was trying to keep it a secret when I was with him, unless he brought up my house or my family, I just felt like as long as he was happy, it was okay. The nightmares went away the night I met him and they didn't come back until he went to New York." Blaine seemed more and more ashamed of himself as he dove further into this admission, appearing to become more and more unstable but restrained. "Because it felt like he didn't need me anymore, and suddenly I couldn't keep being strong. But all that time not having to hide so much of myself made it hard and I kept falling apart, but nobody went after me or noticed or even cared, not even when I broke down in my Grease audition and ran off crying." He brought his knees up to his chest and sighed, dropping his forehead to rest on them. "I didn't mean to wake you," he said again, this time with finality.

Will had no idea how to respond. He knew Blaine had loved Kurt, but this level of personal connection and adoration and well-being that he'd basically ripped away from himself was close to what Will felt he had with Emma - he looked at her and she looked at him and the bit of him that belonged to Blaine started throbbing along with Kurt's part of his heart. "We need you," he said after a stretch of silence. "Okay? We need you here and we need you happy and we need you to know that." He turned back to the boy with his head down and patted his foot softly. "I'm so sorry that nobody went after you or that nobody noticed, and that it's been so hard for you, but buddy," he said, looking Blaine square in the watering eyes as he raised them to look at Will, "you don't have to hold back anymore."

Blaine actually laughed then, a sharp noise, but genuine despite its abruptness. "I'm just a little boy," he reminded them. "And it hurts. Of course I have to hold back."

"Sweetheart," Emma said, handing him the glass. "No, you don't. We're right here. You can say it all, it's okay."

Blaine took the glass after a second of being unsure, and then sighed. "It's still so weird," he said, "feeling like people actually care about my problems."

Will put his arm around Blaine and scooted closer, and Blaine didn't react by flinching away this time, but by snuggling in closer. Like a friend. Like a son.

* * *

When Blaine got up in the morning, for the second and final time, he went to get ready for the day in the second bathroom and found, to his dismay, that he had no hair gel in the gym bag he'd managed to escape with the previous night. And then Will lent him some, and though it wasn't his usual brand, it did the job well. Emma helped him pick out clothing. He ended up with a pair of Will's jeans and one of his gym shirts from his bag, which involved a) no sweaters and/or jacket, and b) no bowties, which made him sad. And then they both fretted over his wound - which really was much better, Emma's salve had worked wonders - like parents and Blaine got that fuzzy feeling in his gut again.

Of course, when he walked into school the next morning, the second he set foot through the doors with a (healing but still easily visible) hand print on his face, with Will's hand on his back and Emma right beside him comfortingly, everyone stared. He almost made it to his locker when he was stopped in his tracks by a fleeting comment.

Sneered a hockey jock as he passed by with his gang of idiot friends, "Hey, faggot, your old man get the best of you?"

Will's hand on Blaine's back balled into a fist, and he shoved Blaine forward roughly, releasing contact and spinning around. Blaine spun around without a second thought, reaching out to pull him back as he saw that he'd been advancing on the shaggy-haired jerk. "He didn't know!" Blaine told Will, pulling him back by grabbing his wrist and yanking it down beside his. Will glared at the retreating form, but didn't fight. Emma reached over and took his hand when Blaine let go of him, noting how everyone in the hall was staring harder than ever. He subconsciously raised his hand to cover the mark, an old habit from when it had first started, and averted his eyes, looking at his feet as he walked forward, making sure the two of them were behind him.

"Blaine," called someone from in front of him, a voice he knew well.

"Finn," he responded, not looking up.

"Glee Club early today," Finn said. "I got you all out of first period. I didn't tell them, I figured it wasn't my story to tell. Why are you covering it up?" he asked, and Blaine glanced upwards to see he was looking at him quizzically. Realizing what he meant, he dropped his hand.

"Force of habit, sorry," he said.

Finn frowned. Obviously not what he wanted to hear. "Right. Well, come on. You two better come too," he said, looking at Will and Emma, who nodded on behalf of both of them, though Will was still fuming. "You need to tell them, they should no," he whispered to Blaine, bending down a ways so avoid the straining ears of curious bystanders. "They're your family, too."

* * *

"What the hell is going on? What happened?" Sam demanded as soon as he saw Blaine's face walk through the door. "Who hit you? Are you okay? What happened?"

Blaine looked at all of their faces. "Nope," he answered honestly, touching it tenderly, hating how raised and visible it felt. Welts were hard to cover, but he could usually do it with a jacket and some makeup. His dad had slapped him _really_ hard this time. Everyone in the room but Tina, Will, Emma and Finn looked confused and a bit scared. The new Glee Clubbers were all sitting in a huddle surrounded by the returning members, and that made him a bit happier; they really were involved and accepted now. He saw an empty seat beside Tina, but didn't move toward it. "Not okay. Better, though, thanks for noticing."

"What about the other questions?" Brittany wondered.

"Guys, leave him be for a minute," Tina told them, more authority in her voice than he'd heard in Will's in quite some time. She stood and moved to stand by him, gently pushing him to in front of the piano. The band wasn't there, and nor was Brad - so there would be no glee in Glee Club today. Considering what he had to tell, he wasn't surprised. The other three moved with him, all patting his back and looking sternly over at the others.

"You're not leaving again, are you?" Marley asked. "We need you."

Blaine snapped his jaw shut when it parted slightly and looked at her with warmed eyes. "Yeah, I know," he joked. "I told you guys before that you're my home, and now I'm going to tell you that you're my family, because here's the deal. My biological family kind of… sucks."

"What do you mean? Cooper's awesome, he's totally got your back," Sam pipes up, getting more and more irritated at how Blaine's not explaining fast enough.

"No kidding, he's on a plane right now," Blaine smiled weakly. "But I meant my parents. Specifically my father."

"We've never actually heard you talk about them," advanced Artie cautiously.

"Right," Blaine took a deep breath, and suddenly his voice caught in his throat. He found that the words lodged down in his esophagus, and he stood in the open trying to speak and failing to push the words out.

"What he's trying to say is," Tina stepped in, "that, basically, since he came out to his parents, his dad's been abusing him."

When it was put so bluntly, it felt like someone had shoved a knife into his stomach and twisted. But then it felt like the knife was gone, because their reactions were all different and yet the same; Sam sat there in total shock, Brittany's mouth formed an _O_, Artie yelled, "WHAT?!", Marley groaned and put her head in her hands, Jake brought his hand down on his knee hard, and Ryder swore loudly. "Why did he never say anything?" Sam whispered.

"His dad threatened to kill him if he did," Finn answered, and Blaine hung his head before a thought struck him. He didn't actually know how effective reporting his father's abuse would be unless they had proof of it; and he must have known by then that people knew. Tina had witnessed it firsthand; or, she'd seen what couldn't be denied. His dad could play the no-evidence card, even with the mark on his face, and get off totally free - and then what would he do to Blaine, and, worse yet, the people looking at him now? Kill them, hurt them, Blaine was certain of it. He felt his blood run as cold as it had the first time his dad had struck him, after he'd said he was gay, but not quite as cold as it had been when Kurt had said he didn't trust him anymore. The chilled feeling seeped through him veins until it reached his heart, which thudded to a stop and then started to race. He looked at everyone - so scared, so angry, so saddened by the news, by the discovery. It hadn't even been a day, hardly twelve hours since Tina'd found out. None of them were safe. His ears were ringing, his head was spinning, his heart was racing, his vision was blurring, and everything, every tiny detail, was all jumped and mashed together into one big terrifying picture. And then it was all being whipped into a tunnel as it drew closer impossibly quickly to his face.

And then he jerked to a stop, just inches from the carpet, and shouts accompanied the hands that had caught him laying him down on the floor. The carpet was coarse but it cushioned him well enough. There were colors swirling above him, and voices, his name being called, and hands grabbing at him - and then there was nothing but fear.

* * *

It was impossible for Cooper not to recognize the woman walking toward him; he had signed her breast once, after all; but he was in no mood to talk pleasantries. He'd had nothing but his baby brother on his mind since Blaine had called him and explained, and his heart still hadn't stopped racing. "Where is he?" he asked brusquely.

"Choir room," she answers, and he took off, not bothering to ask where she was going when she kept on her path. He remembered the way fairly well, and soon, he was peering through open doors, his appearance haggard, unlike normal, when he called out Blaine's name.

"Cooper!" Tina squeaked, standing straight and stiff as a board, looking highly guilty and wary of him. Everyone was crowded around something on the floor, shouting things that were impossible to make out, until they heard his name; and then everyone froze, fell silent, and turned to look at him.

"Cooper," Finn repeated Tina, just as wary but not as rigid.

Cooper wasn't a genius, but it didn't take one to know that Blaine was the thing they were crowded around. "Move away from him, right now!" Cooper shouted, and they did so automatically. Cooper felt the color drain from his face as he looked at his brother, on the floor, his right arm splayed out, wearing an odd t-shirt and jeans, his hair still gelled, his face pale and as scared as it had been that one time when they were kids and Cooper'd fallen off his bike and broken his arm - not scared for himself, but scared for someone else and what might become of him without them. Cooper knew the face well, it was burned into his memory. Now, being engrave in his memory alongside it, were the welts on his face caused by the man Cooper had always looked up to. He was at his side in a moment, feeling for a pulse, though he knew he'd find one by the slight breathing he could heard. "Come on, Blainey," he muttered. "Wake up for me, open those stupid puppy-dog eyes."

There was no response, and then when Cooper's fingers on his wrist pushed hard with anxiety, Blaine's lashes flickered open, and he croaked, "Sorry!"

"Blaine," Cooper breathed, leaning back so his ass rested on his heels, gripping Blaine's wrist tightly and rubbing his forehead with the other. "God, Blaine, first Dad and now I find you passed out on the ground?"

"Coop," Blaine said, sitting straight up and then his eyes glassing over. Cooper moved like lightning, pushing him back down gently as he gave a small gasp. "Head rush," he explained.

"Then lie down and relax," Cooper told him sternly. "Why were you on the ground in the first place?"

"He was telling us about… all of this," Ryder stepped forward, "and just kind of collapsed."

Blaine shuddered.

Cooper's stern expression softened. His baby brother… "Squirt, why didn't you _tell_ me any of this was going on? I could have helped, I could have gotten you away from there, you didn't have to keep me in the dark. And all the times I visited for the holidays or just randomly, and you all seemed so happy -"

"I'm an actor," Blaine muttered, "it's my job to sell a performance and stay in character. And he's a cruel person, and cruel people tend more often than not to keep cruelty hidden."

"Well, I'm here now," Cooper offered, and beckoned for the others to circle up again. "And so are they, and we know now, so it's going to be alright. You're going to be fine." They moved slowly, carefully, as if afraid to touch him because he might break. Honestly, Cooper had never seen Blaine look more like Porcelain than Kurt before now, and it disturbed him. But they gathered around him anyway, Brittany reaching him first and sitting directly beside his head so she could run her hands over his stiff, gelled hair. Slowly, individually, they all crowded around him, and smiled encouragingly, but for those who seemed ready to either cry or punch something, like Sam.

"I know you're here," Blaine said, struggling to prop himself up onto his elbows but succeeding with Cooper's help. He looked at Cooper with eyes that were dry but spoke of more emotion than any pair of wet ones. "And that's _not_ a good thing, not yet. For any of you."

"Blaine?" asked Will, confused. "What do you mean?"

They waited.

Cooper, at the time, thought only of getting answers, not how hard it would be for Blaine to say them or how much they'd hurt. Cooper, at the time, thought only of understanding why his brother had put himself through so much torture. Cooper, at the time, was driven by a selfish desire to want Blaine to be safe and to have the knowledge to make that a reality. And at the time, nobody else thought of anything else, either; so nobody noticed how his lip trembled, how his skin grew ashen, how his eyes darkened, how his eyebrows went flat and lowered themselves, how his mouth straightened into a tight line, how he dipped his head and how shaky his breath was. But they were clinging to any and all words coming from him, so his next sentence had a lot of impact: "Coop, I'm _scared_."

* * *

As it turns out, Blaine had good reason to be scared. But not until the school day ended. He'd gone to Coach Sylvester's office, like he'd been told to, and she'd asked him if he was okay and when he wanted to go and if he wanted to stay for Cheerio practice. He'd said: "No, but I will be, I think. After practice, probably, and sure, I'll stay." She'd nodded and then asked him if he could run to her car and get her bag that she'd left there during lunch; he'd said sure. She handed him the keys. He left.

The rest of the day, following his little fainting spell, he'd spent with Cooper with him in the halls or Cooper standing in the back of a classroom or Cooper making sure he was okay. Normal people would have been suffocated by the attention. Blaine had found the change nice and somewhat relaxing, though none of his nagging worries had faded away whatsoever - they'd just been shoved back to make room for the appreciation of the care Cooper was showing him. And the New Directions were always around him, too, fending off people who asked too many questions, giving him extra food at lunch ("Get more nutrients into you and you might look a little more healthy," Sam had said), and basically doing what Cooper's been doing. Whenever he passed by Will or Emma or Sue, he'd always been stopped and asked a question, one of which was repeated twice before he gave in ("Can we tell Principal Figgins?"), but mostly "Are you alright? Holding in there?" The spotlight, though it made him feel a bit helpless, also made him feel _helped_, and that was a novelty.

He'd felt good enough that he told Cooper to go find somewhere to stay for the time being while he stayed with Sue; he'd told Tina and Brittany to go to practice ahead of him and he'd meet them there; he'd hugged everyone goodbye and held himself together through all the texts that had poured in as soon as they were out of his sight.

Also, every single graduate of Glee Club had called him or texted him at some point during the day, panicking and wanting to know if he was okay and if they needed to come back for him. He'd told them all what had eventually been explained to everyone else that had to do with Glee. Kurt hadn't stopped begging to come down, but Blaine refused, adamant that his future schoolwork and current internship required more attention than he.

He felt better. He did not, by any stretch of the imagination, feel good.

And so, keys jingling in hand, alone for the first time that day, he walked out of the school building and towards the parking lot, staring at his feet as he focused on all the problems that ran rampant through his head. He had nearly made it to Sue's car when he heard a voice.

"Going somewhere?"

He froze. Not just in his movements, but in his head, in his blood, in his heart, everything just stopped working and for one flicker of a moment, everything screamed in him to run.

"Staying somewhere, I should ask," his father amended, his voice drawing nearer from behind him. "Because you didn't come home, but you're here. And you're not covering up your face, and you left all your things in your room, and at around noon today…" his breath was on the back of Blaine's neck, and he could picture him leaning down and whispering the words menacingly, "I got a visit from a police officer saying I'd been reported for child abuse."

It was impossible to move, but he wanted nothing more to. His muscles strained to burst free, but he was coated in ice, feeling the hot breath of his father melt some of it away into beads of sweat.

"Now, I got out of that quickly," he continued, as if it were the simplest thing in the word, so casual, so light. "Said you're run away and I'd give you until the end of the school day before you came home, because you had a temper and a tendency to run out on me, but you always came back." He chuckled darkly. "But they're going to put me under surveillance if you don't come back with me. If you do, and if you're convincing, this whole thing will be over and we'll go back to normal. Of course, everyone who knows will have to go," he mused. "I wonder how I'll get around that. Lies, as usual, but how big and for how long?" He shook his head, Blaine could feel his breath moving from side to side. "So tell me, is it just the Asian girl?"

"No!" Blaine gasped. There wasn't a full second between the time it escaped and his father's hands were where his breath had been a moment ago.

"I know she knows, but who else?" his father snarled. "_Who else_?!"

"Nobody, nobody knows, I lied!" he exclaimed pitifully against the fingers closing on his windpipe. "I told her I fell and smacked myself and you were angry so you threw me out! She doesn't know about the hitting!"

"But she knows about the yelling, she can't have missed that!" His father squeezed infinitesimally tighter.

"Everyone yells at their kids at some point!" he begged, but it was becoming more and more difficult to squeeze words out.

"You have ten seconds to tell me who all knows, or you'll never breathe again," his father promised huskily into his ear, his voice a purr of ominous threats.

And so Blaine, for the first time, fought back.

He fought back for Sam, for Finn, for Will and Tina and Artie and Brittany and Marley and Ryder and Jake and Kitty and Sugar and Rory and Quinn and Santana and Puck and Mike and Unique and Mercedes and Rachel and Burt and Carole and Cooper and he fought back for Kurt.

He dropped the keys to the pavement and brought his nails up to his father's hands, clawing at his fingers so he let go with a yelp of surprise. He gulped in a huge amount of air, and then spun around and let all his boxing training come out. He threw in an uppercut and a leftie, ducking underneath his father's retaliating fist to grab his back and bend him forward onto his knee, which he jabbed into his stomach the same time he clasped his hands together and brought them down on his neck.

And then, just when he thought that maybe he was going to get away, his father grabbed at his ankle, within reaching distance due to the position, and yanked it to Blaine slid onto his back, his head hitting the pavement with a dull thud and causing his vision to spot. His father stumbled a couple steps ass Blaine tried to scramble away, but then he leapt and pinned Blaine down, slamming into him with such force and weight Blaine lost all the air he'd inhaled. His arm rested just under Blaine's chin, tilting his head back painfully, pressing down so he couldn't get any air back; his other hand came down on his arm so hard Blaine heard the sickening snap before he felt it - and then he did feel it, and howled a silent cry for help that never got past his blocked throat.

* * *

He opened his mouth to scream - no sound came out. Good. The faggot deserved to choke. Maybe he'd start to vomit, if he punched him hard enough in the stomach, and then he'd choke to death. But then how would he know who else knew? If Blaine choked to death it could pass off as someone beating him and then that happening, and he showed up there at the right time to see him die. That could be done. But the others, how many others? No matter how bad of a person you are, killing another human being rips a small bit of yourself away from you. Not that he knew that; all he knew is that Blaine deserved being beaten, and it shouldn't be his problem to deal with everyone else who didn't understand that.

Gay. Gay, gay, gay, it all disgusted him to no end. So wrong, so sick, so twisted, so how was what he was doing worse? And that Kurt, that he texted, that he 'loved', being kept away in the dark, never knowing… he was probably one of the ones who knew. But didn't he go to New York? How would he get him there?

The tasks ahead of him proved impossible. Good. He liked a challenge.

He burrowed his arm further into the crevice of Blaine's neck as Blaine struggled beneath him, tears spilling over. How weak, how like a little pansy, how like him. Doing stupid crafts, like making gum-wrapper rings or scrapbooks, singing in Glee Club… Oh, how much he hated him…

"Who else?" he growled, bringing his fist down again in the same spot and causing Blaine to squeak out in pain. "Who did you tell?"

"Nbdy!" Blaine chattered, incapable of getting the air necessary for vowels. He grinned in playful interest. He was still lying. How many? It must have been several, too many for him to get away with, he'd get in more trouble is he went after them… but they were all a bunch of fag-lovers, so why not go ahead and do it?

"TELL ME WHO ELSE!"

Blaine kicked feebly and as a result, he brought the toe of his foot down on Blaine's leg, hearing his steel-toed boots - thank goodness for good, old-fashioned stores - make contact and cause another, somewhat less audible, snap, and Blaine wailed mutely. He loved seeing him like that, thrashing, in agony. He'd never gone so far before, and it exhilarated him, sent thrums of adrenaline through his veins.

He shifted so he put almost all of his weight onto his arm, and shoved it in further still, and Blaine's eyes almost popped out of their sockets and his limbs flailed about wildly. They never hurt him, they never got him off, all they did was waste his precious and dwindling energy until his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.

A wonderful sense of accomplishment flooded him and he rolled off of his son onto the pavement, leaping to his feet in satisfaction, brushing off his clothing of the dirt accumulated from the asphalt. He'd done it. He was free of the stupid, wrong, gross, irritating, ugly little bitch forever. He felt free, freer than he had since Blaine had sat down with them and told them he was a freaking homosexual, saying he hoped they'd still love him. If there was something he knew, it's that you never actually love someone until they've done everything you wanted; he'd never loved Blaine, so hating him in that instant was quicker than blinking. But he felt like he could soar now, above trees, over rivers away.

But he was tied to this place until that Asian girl walked out, but after studying Blaine's revolting Cheerio calender (what kind of _lady_ does cheerleading, anyway?) he knew practice wasn't over for three hours after the school day ends.

So he took one last look at the body on the pavement, grinned in joy, and hurried off to plan.

* * *

"Anderson?" Sue called out, stepping outside. Blaine hadn't been back in with her bag in twenty minutes, was he alright, having trouble finding it or something? "Anderson, are you out here? What's taking you so long?"

There was no response. She was tempted to go back inside, but knowing his current state, she walked towards her car, hoping to see some sign of him looking for her bag or walking back. It really hadn't been that important, but he'd been surrounded all day and she thought he might have liked a little free time.

_Dammit, Sue, stop caring so much. He's just a kid._

_Exactly why he needs you to care._

She caught a glint of something shiny on the ground, and peering it at, her vision slid over just a bit -

His sneaker.

"Anderson?!" she shouted, jogging over. What had happened, why was he laying down, had he fainted again? How vulnerable he was, how hurt and scared, she didn't doubt it. But as she drew nearer, she knew something was horrible wrong - the bottom of his right pants leg was stained red, and his left arm was bent below the elbow in a way that made her stomach churn uneasily. And as she stood next to him, she realized his chest wasn't moving up and down. "BLAINE!" she shouted, dropping to her knees and pressing her ear to his mouth, hearing only the tiniest trickle of air flowing through it, in and out, in and out, growing fainter each time. Panicked, she thought maybe he might be choking on something, and she pushed him onto his side and hit his back to spit it out -

Blood flew from his mouth and she shouted his name again, her heart ceasing before making every fiber of her being pulse with terror and dread.

* * *

It was all a very fast, very odd process, dying was.

At first, Blaine was absolutely terrified. When his father had dug into his neck, he'd felt something inside it, something small but apparently vital, give the tiniest twinge almost regretfully, and then the air just stopped coming. As his father had pressed harder, his air stream had gotten smaller and smaller due to blockage; but nothing was blocking him now, it just seemed like all the air in the world had run out. That thought alone locked him in place so he could feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Not only had the air run out, but everything inside of it, everything it had ever touched, had vanished with it. When he was young, his family had gone to Florida for Christmas, to spend it with his mother's family. At around seven thirty in the morning, his mother had awakened he and Cooper, and taken them to a nearby lake, and just pointed out into the middle of it. It had been impossible to see. Mist was so thick and surrounding them so thoroughly as it was that driving had been dangerous; but staring onto that lake's surface, watching the clouds of mist undulate without changing a bit of its appearance, opaque had gained a color. That was what it felt like, at first. It felt like everything disappeared into the mist, and he was in the middle of nothing. His limbs weren't attached anymore, he was just floating. He was a part of the mist.

And then there were odd pricks on his left, but he couldn't turn to see what it was because he had to way of doing so; and then something behind him must have struck his back, because suddenly he had limbs again, but they all felt vaguely like they'd been taped on, not like they were pieces of him. And the feeling of the air disappearing vanished when he found he had a mouth again, and it had spit blood. And then everything was gone once more.

It wasn't too long before the must gained shapes, sounds, smells. But they didn't really exist; he knew they were there, and he could see where they were in his head, but his eyes lied to him and saw nothing, and the same with the sounds and smells - they must have been there, but it was as if he conjured them in his head, because though he sensed they were real, his senses didn't pick up anything. It was a curious limbo between reality and imagination, and it was blissful. After a while, Blaine began to lose ideas other than the figments of thought he focused and watched so intently.

And all of a sudden, curiosity was gone and replaced with infinite knowledge, and he knew and felt and saw and heard and smelled and tasted and felt everything that had ever been and would ever be and was in that moment, and he realized, with one flickering thought, that though it was flawed it was good.

And then the light went out and darkness blacker than any before it replaced the mist, his mind's eyes going blank as everything became nonexistent, losing tantricity with each blip of consciousness.

* * *

"Get…. it's not… get him breathing!"

* * *

"Come on… you've… Sam is… no…"

* * *

"He can't… this… won't he… when…"

* * *

"We… need him, it's… debate, I…"

* * *

"Heart, his… it's up! Get… yes, keep…"

* * *

Waking up from being dead is painful.

Excruciating, horrible, terrible, gut-wrenching, screech-out-loud-if-you-could-to-drown-out-the-ringing-in-your-ears… painful.

It's like in one millisecond, your body and mind has to reteach itself everything, had to remember every muscle strained and trained, every memory of everyone you ever met. All the peace he'd known beforehand, the completeness, was something that he found he couldn't reach with this reiteration of everything, though he craved it badly. Every joint and jointed part of his body was screaming so loudly he felt the very core of his being shake near the point of breaking. The darkness was gone, and the mist wasn't there, but it took a while for his mind to reach the point where he knew why he was seeing the colors he was; he was looking at the inside of his eyelids in a brightly lit room. His mind was groggy with that realization until it remembered that it had happened before, and suddenly every traumatic thing, every breath taken where he'd secretly harbored the desire to just stop breathing, ganged up on him.

It hurt worse than the physical pain.

But he stayed silent, knowing if he opened his mouth now, everything would fade into the mist again. How he knew, he was and is unaware, but he knew nonetheless; and though he was not yet at the stage of remembering who he was fighting for, he knew he was fighting for someone.

Everything.

Came.

Back.

In.

One.

Moment.

And then most of it was over and he just felt extraordinarily sore, like he'd just done a workout without breaks or proper nourishment for twenty-four hours straight. Exhaustion was awful, and in some places he hurt worse than other - like his left arm and right leg, which for some reason felt like knives were piercing them, and his neck, which was tight and strung so strictly now as opposed to its flimsiness earlier that the tiredness almost didn't win out, and sleep didn't consume him.

* * *

Everyone in the hall was in various states of disarray, tension, confusion, despair, and grief.

Dead.

He was dead.

Exactly two minutes and forty-seven seconds ago, they're heard one of the voice within the ICU unit scream, "HIS HEART BLANKED, HIS HEART BLANKED, GET HIM BACK ON LINE BEFORE HE SHUTS DOWN!"

How were they to deal with the news when given to them like that? Hell, how were they supposed to take the news at all? What had even happened? Sue had walked out of the building, found him in the parking lot, hit his back to try and get him to breathe, and then dialed an ambulance before calling Will, closest to hysterics he'd ever heard her as she held him, both afraid of touching him and even more afraid to let go. And now here they were, in the hospital, each of them dealing with it a different way.

Tina and Marley and Sam were all sobbing. Artie, who any of them had yet to see cry, was staring at the door blankly. Kitty was clinging to Jake's arm, both of them looking ready to vomit, and Ryder was assaulting the wall with the strength of a football player and the power of a poor man's suffering. Emma was curled into a tight little ball, not letting anyone touch her, the stress of the day causing her OCD to flare up vividly, almost to the point of dysfunction, and Will looked so impossibly wounded Sue might have though he was the one dying of injuries.

Cooper, on the other hand, was different. Sue had almost always seen him acting. It came as second nature to him, she supposed, after putting himself through so much to be good at it. No matter how sincere he was, he always displayed a tiny bit of holding back something so he could project specifically what he wanted to. But as soon as the words had registered in everyone's ears, all pretense of holding back had vanished, and Cooper, for once, looked totally and completely genuine. And that was tragic, because though he held nothing back now, he had nothing to hold back. His face belonged to someone who had lost everything. So did his heart. And it was so plain to see that, Sue might actually have started crying for the first time since her sister's funeral.

But she couldn't. She bit back and swallowed and blinked furiously and wrung her hands and bit her cheek and did everything she knew to to hold back tears, something she'd been doing since she'd been left to raise her sister on her own, because she could not care for him so much.

Caring hurt. How many times had that been proven to her? So you either stopped caring, or stopped letting people know you cared.

She tried doing both. But for some reason, knowing that Blaine wasn't there to make her practices slip away as she threw off some of her tendencies to help him, she felt like her sister had died all over again.

Four minutes and six seconds.

And the door flew open and there was a doctor standing there, glasses askew, hair ruffled, lab coat flapping and clipboard held upside down. "He's going to be fine," he announced, sounding weary, like he'd just fought an entire war by himself. Sue knew the feeling. But it lifted when he said the words, and glancing around, the others seemed to sense it, too, the feeling of not being weighed down quite so much by something so heavy-spirited. "He was clinically dead for about four minutes, but we got him back on line. He's going to make a full recovery, we expect. His injures are no longer life-threatening, thanks to you, miss Sylvester," he said, nodding to her. "If you hadn't knocked those bits of blood from his throat, he would have died and stayed dead. We'll have him fully back shortly. He's fallen asleep."

"He's sleeping," Cooper breathed - literally breathed, as if he'd been devoid of oxygen for centuries and was just now finding it again, and there was a warmth in his eyes no actor could fake. "Blaine is… _sleeping_."

"Correct," the doctor awarded him, not even bothering with condescension. "His body, however, is enormously strained, because waking up from… well, dying… is extremely painful. He's absolutely exhausted, for for about an hour, he'll be out cold, and then all the signals to his brain will probably wake him up, and he might need someone there who knows how to calm him down."

"Not a single damn one of us is leaving this place until we see his eyes open!" Ryder proclaimed with finality, and there were nods of agreement.

"I see," said the doctor, eyeing them all curiously. "Is there any family we should contact, or -"

"No, I'm his older brother," Cooper interrupted, stepping forward and saying the words with such pride and love Sue felt for a minute like he was her speaking about Jeanie. "and telling our parents would not calm him down, believe me."

The doctor pursed his lips. "Are you sure?"

"I'm William Schuester, teacher and leader of Glee Club at William McKinley High School," Will ventured next. "Cooper and I are both mature adults and we both care about him a great deal. We'll be responsible for him for the time being."

It took the doctor a moment of deliberation. "Very well."

"Oh," Sue murmured, putting her hands on either side of her face. "Oh, oh, I… how are we going to find out how it happened?"

"He's g-going to t-t-tell us," Sam choked, smiling behind the waterworks.

"We can't ask him, we're trying to calm him down," scoffed Jake with no actual scoffing in his tone.

"No, but he'll tell us," Cooper said. "Right away, he's going to tell us, and then and only then will he be able to calm down. It's what he does. Bottle things up until they explode out."

And Sue found that a laugh was lilting through her lips, and though she got strange looks, she didn't care. _He's going to be okay._

* * *

"Kurt?"

"Dad," Kurt greeted immediately, not having to even see the caller ID to recognize his dad's ring tone. "What's up? Everything okay?"

"No," Burt said shortly. Kurt paused for a moment, shifting the phone from between his shoulder and tilted head so he was holding it after having wiped his hand on the towel, drying it slightly from the soapy water he'd been using to wash the dishes. Burt's voice was clipped, sharp, worried - everything it had been whenever he'd just had too much stress.

Kurt also knew what happened next if it continued to push at him. "Take a deep breath, dad," he ordered. "Take a really deep, even breath, and the let it out slowly." His father complied after a second, and then sighed.

"Thanks, kiddo," he said quietly, but his voice was still tight.

"Now keep doing that, you'll feel better soon. Just make sure not to hyperventilate," Kurt said, leaning against the sink. "And hand me over to… who else is there with you?"

He got no answer, just the sound of vague voices and rustling of fabric, which he assumed to be clothing. And then Carole's voice filled the phone. "Hi, Kurt."

"Carole," he said, "what happened?"

"Are you sitting down?" she asked.

"What is it with everyone and wanting me to sit down?" he demanded. "I can take it, just tell me."

"Are you sure?"

"Tell me, Carole!" he commanded, surprised to find that his voice was forceful and razor-sharp when he willed it to be.

"Blaine's in the hospital right now."

Kurt was right; he could take it standing up. Usually he got a physical reaction whenever bad news happened, like feeling ill or freezing in place or running away. This time it was purely mental how all sorts of different thoughts screamed to be released at once. "Why?" was the first one he settled on.

"We don't entirely know what caused it," Carole began slowly, cautiously, "but he's got his arm broken in two places and his leg basically shattered, and his neck was screwed up for a while and strained itself so blood got caught in his throat, but Sue knocked it out and he'll be fine. He's going to recover, but he… he died, Kurt. He was dead for four minutes, but he's alive and he'll wake up soon, they tell us."

"Blaine was dead?" Kurt asked, shocked at how distant and yet overwhelming loud his voice rang in his ears.

"But he isn't now," Carole assured him, "And he won't be for a long time, I don't think."

Kurt's processing system had somehow gotten all messed up and he found thoughts escaping his lips out of the order he'd intended to say them in. "Did he get hit by a car or something? Why is he so hurt?"

"We don't know, sweetheart," Carole whispered consolingly. "When he wakes up, we think he'll tell us, but we just don't know."

"Who else knows about this?"

"All the former and current Glee Club members, your dad and I, Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury, and Sue."

"Does that include Rachel?"

"We phoned her right before you. She's out on a date right now, isn't she? She'll be home soon."

"What was everyone's reaction?"

"That requires a response that will take away too much time to be answered properly," Carole joked weakly. "But suffice it to say everyone is coming home to be with him."

"Can I come home, too?"

"Are you capable of staying there?"

"I don't think so, not without going crazy."

"Then come home, Kurt. We'll be waiting for you here."

* * *

"Kurt!" screamed Rachel as she flung herself through the apartment door. "Kurt, _KURT_!"

"Hi," he said calmly, looking at her and opening his arms for a hug, which she bolted into, nearly knocking him down with the strength of her embrace. "You heard, I take it."

"We have to go, Kurt, we have to go!"

"I know," he told her softly. "I bought our plane tickets a couple minutes ago. I called Isabelle and told her what's going on and I've got a week or so off work. We should pack right now if we'll make it to the airport by six."

"How are you so _calm_?" she whispered, almost accusingly, to him.

"Everyone else is upset and for once I'm not going to be a part of a sob-fest," he explained, grinning a fake grin. "Someone's got to take care of everyone, and it looks like nobody's up for the task but me, so here I am."

* * *

When they finally got on their plane, they each had a scanty bag underneath their seat and hands clasped together. Rachel was talking in a really fast voice with Brody, who could, through some miracle, understand her rapid-fire speech, even through the phone. Not only that, he could respond to it and get her started again. The kid had talent, Kurt had to admit, and Rachel was pretty high-maintenance but he seemed to be holding his own.

During take-off and every second afterward, he and Rachel sat in frigid silence, clutching to each other and waiting for when they could land.

* * *

"How is this going to work?" muttered Tina, in her chair that they'd placed as part of the semi-circle around Blaine. They swarmed his bed, some standing, others sitting, so that everyone could be seen and heard. They knew that if anything would make him feel better, it would be a song, and particularly a soft but happy one. But what were they to sing? "What do we do?"

"We sing," Sam said, as if it were obvious.

"But what?" Marley insisted. Burt, Carole, Sue and Emma stood to one side of the room, waiting apprehensively. Blaine was due to wake any minute now, and they wanted him to wake up and know they were right there, like always. But… how?

"Fireflies?" suggested Kitty.

"Fireflies?" repeated Ryder, unsure. "Isn't that a little too… I don't know, peppy?"

Kitty shrugged. "It's beautiful music, if a little bit hard, but we've got enough people to do it. We'll slow it down, see how it sounds then."

"I don't know," Finn said slowly.

"Let's try it," Tina said, looking at Kitty with an expression that said 'I hope you're right because if you're not we're screwed'.

* * *

There was music. Beautiful, beautiful music. Like a chorus of individually stunning voices, all meshing together with odd eighth notes and an abnormal key signature and it was beautiful. For a moment, though he felt immense agony rippling through him in waves, his let his mind wander in the notes. He knew this tune, but it was slower and a little higher than he'd heard it before. Where… where had he heard this..?

And then all the panic and terror and horror and fright and rigid, flailing misery hurtled at him, and he couldn't focus on the song any longer. He opened his eyes, not even caring about the bright lights, and saw the faces of his friends, all singing. They smiled but kept on performing when they saw he'd awakened; until he spotted Tina on his right, and shouted, "No!"

He then found that shouting with an injured throat is severely painful.

They all skidded to a halt. "Tina," he choked, "Tina, Tina, did he hurt you, did he find you, are you okay?!"

"Blaine, I'm right here," she tried to reassure him gently, reaching over and taking his hand.

"I know, I can see that!" he tried to sit up, to talk to her, to go towards her, to push her away and tell her to run, but his throat was screaming at him to stop screaming and jagged knives of torture slid up and down his limbs when he tried to move. But he had to get them away, had to get them safe, they should leave him, leave him, they had to leave and hide -

And then hands were guiding him down gently, pushing on him, the singing voices now crooning to him and asking him to please calm down. What he wouldn't have done to be able to grab those hands and run away with their owners so nobody could hurt them anymore. "I'm fine, you're going to be okay," Tina repeated constantly, smiling at him with what he supposed was intended to be a soothing smile.

"No!" he tried to shout, to get them to listen, and he struggled to be free of their grasp, but the aching in his bones prevented that, and they fought harder to keep him still. Tears rose to his eyes and he didn't have the energy to fight them back. They dripped down his face onto his pillow, sliding through his still-gelled hair. "No, you have to leave -"

"We're not going anywhere, Blaine," Jake said honestly.

He made a sound similar to that of a strangled cat and thrashed harder. "No, get out, get out!" He could barely squeeze half of the sounds into the air, no wonder they were mishearing him.

"Shh, shh," they all soothed him in different ways, and he let his body go limp and his head whirl even harder from the extreme effort, the tears coming faster, bigger and hotter now than they had before. "Don't cry," Brittany said, wiping away his right cheek. "You'll be fine, just relax."

"He'll hurt you," he begged them to understand.

"Nobody will hurt you again," Artie promised, and Blaine felt like shrieking at how hopeless and ignored he was even when surrounded by so much hope and attention.

* * *

Kurt wasn't there when Blaine woke up. None of the graduates (but Finn) were. So none of them had to coax what had happened out of him, and none of them were there to see him break down and finally tell the tale. So none of them were totally and completely horrified into shocked silence like everyone else was at that exact moment.

But Kurt was at the airport afterwards, he and Rachel arriving just in the middle of everyone coming in. So Kurt heard his dad's retelling of it to the two of them as they were driven to the hospital. So he was totally and completely horrified into shocked silence eventually; but he didn't hear it from Blaine, and from what Carole said, that was good, because he'd been crying and thrashing and trying desperately to say things they could only half-way hear through his inured throat. "It's still straining, and they're putting him under orders not to speak unless he needs something," Carole said as they pulled into the parking lot.

And they walked, Kurt's arm around Rachel and her arm around him, through the hallways and elevator doors and staff and visitors and even some patients, until they stood outside Blaine's room. The mass of people around his bed made it hard to see; but thankfully, Kurt couldn't understand Spanish, because Santana was in one of the moods she got into when furious where she cussed at everything and everyone. She was ranting in the other language right beside Blaine, and they knew because they could see her leaning over him to check on casts and body parts as she yelled. Oddly enough, people seemed calmed, if distraught, and though Sue was nowhere nearby - reporting Blaine's father again, Kurt guessed - everyone was halfway between frowning and smiling, which made them look a little like they were grimacing.

Kurt pushed into the room, and as soon as someone saw him and pointed - he thought it was Sam, but he was still straining to see Blaine so he didn't really care enough to look - everyone fell silent, and even Santana's words ceased. He took slow steps into the room, making sure he was okay to proceed, still looking around heads.

But everyone parted out of his way until finally he could see Blaine.

And Blaine could see him.

His hair was still gelled, but a little unruly behind his ears, a place Kurt new from experience he tried really hard to keep under control because it was insanely curly and stubborn about being so. His eyes were sparkling, like always, and though he was pale and the purple bags under those sparkling eyes looked etched into his very skin, he didn't look too upset. But then, Kurt knew what a good actor he was.

But as soon as Blaine saw him, that looked of quelled, if momentary, peace fled from his face, and he stretched out the hand whose arm wasn't covered in plaster toward him. "Kurt," he said.

Though Blaine's voice had no volume and was basically air slipping between his chapped lips, Kurt heard it loud and clear, and he moved like molasses forward, reaching out for his hand and clasping it tightly in his. "You're not supposed to speak unless you need something," Kurt reminded him, reiterating what he'd learned only couple minutes before.

Blaine nodded a small nod and smiled a small smile. " 's why I spoke," he explained.

Kurt swallowed thickly, trying not to look at Blaine's injuries. "Oh."

Just then, Will's phone went off. He sent the two boys an apologetic look and everyone else a look that said 'I just saved you from witnessing a weepy reunion, be thankful'. "Hello?" he asked, and Kurt pulled up the nearest chair and sat down, never once releasing Blaine's hand, not even when Rachel came and awkwardly hugged him, kissing his forehead like Kurt kissed hers. "Yeah," Will continued. "Of course, girls, it's no problem. Yes, he is." Another pause, in which everyone situated around Blaine again, adjusting to the atmosphere. Kurt noticed Unique looking at him, and waved to her weakly; she waved back with a bit more enthusiasm, and the corners of his lips tugged up. "How soon?" A beat. "Yeah, I'll be there. Sure. Be safe, girls. Bye." At the questioning looks when he hung up the phone, he said, "That was Mercedes and Quinn. They took the same plane to get here, and Puck was in the bathroom when they called, but they'll be here soon and need someone to drive them here from the airport. I said I would. Blaine, is that okay?"

Blaine nodded his affirmative, and Santana said, "Everyone's coming, right?"

"Except Sugar," Artie muttered foully to his feet.

"And Rory," Brittany said. "I miss Rory."

"And Matt," Mike said.

"Nobody really cared about Matt," Santana remarked.

"But yes," Emma piped up, above all the chatter, "Everyone's coming."

Kurt looked around and noticed Cooper eyeing him holding his brother's hands. "Hi, Cooper," he greeted feebly.

"Kurt," Cooper said, his voice clipped. "You do know you're the only person he's let touch him since we got him to calm down?"

Kurt looked to Blaine once more. "Really?"

Blaine didn't nod this time, but he pursed his lips and glared at his brother. "It's true," Tina told him. "We kept trying to get him to calm down by pushing him back to the bed and when he finally gave up he told us not to touch him again, and every time we tried he'd, like, jump."

"Why?" Kurt asked him. Blaine's eyes flickered to his lips and then down to his own hand in Kurt's. "Oh," was Kurt's response again. Blaine's cheeks gained a pinkish hue.

* * *

"I'm saying that you need to find this man and get him right now," Sue told the officers standing in front of her angrily. "He has mutilated and killed a child."

"Killed?" the first officer asked. "I thought you said he's alive."

"He is," Sue said. "He was clinically dead for four minutes, but we got him back. He's alive now and he should recover, but his left arm is broken in two places and his right leg is shattered, not to mention the fact that until his neck stops straining to mend itself he won't be able to speak any louder than a whisper."

"And he says his dad did this?" asked the second.

"Yes!" she exclaimed in frustration. "I covered this over the phone!"

"What proof is there that his dad actually did it, though?" asked the first. "A lot of teenagers get in fights and lie about who did it if they're angry at the person."

"Wouldn't they be angrier about who killed them than who'd been making them simply unhappy?" she challenged. "He's being abused and I don't care what lies that man told you, but this boy died and very nearly stayed dead because of his father, and you need to do something about it!"

"We will, ma'am," the first assured her. "But we need to speak to him first."

"He can't speak, I told you," she repeated what she'd said earlier.

"Can he nod, or write?" the second asked. She nodded. "That's all we need."

"Now?" she faltered. "He's kind of… busy at the moment."

"Doing what?" the first demanded.

She narrowed her eyes. "Nevermind that. Give me five minutes and then come up and talk to him."

* * *

"Hey, Porcelain, it's good to see you."

Kurt turned. The room had been emptied of all but he and Blaine, and even Cooper sat out in the hallway, discussing things in hushed tones - it had actually been his idea to give them some privacy. So far, Kurt had only managed to squeeze out, "So… have a nice nap?" That Blaine had laughed silently at. But Coach Sylvester was standing at the doorway, looking at him and actually smiling. "Coach Sylvester," he said.

"It's Sue to you," she told him. "But to the police officers that are coming up, you might want to address them with the same formality you just showed me."

"Police?" he repeated, and felt Blaine's hand tense on his.

"They're coming up to ask Blaine questions so they can take his father in," she explained. "And then hopefully he'll go to jail, and then Blaine will get better, and he'll actually spend the night in my home as planned. We might even work out decorating his room to his desires." She winked at the bed-ridden boy. "In the meantime, you two have about a minute and a half to kiss and make up because honestly, you two, stop putting it off. A couple hours ago you could have lost any chance to kiss him at all," she pointed out as Kurt opened his mouth to argue, and she turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Kurt turned back to Blaine slowly, the sentence changing in his mind, transforming, morphing into a huge spear aimed right at his heart, which stuttered painfully. "But I didn't lose you," he argued, though he knew it was lame.

Blaine squeezed his hand and smiled reassuringly. "You don't have to kiss me," he intoned, "I'm still here."

"I know," Kurt replied, placing a finger over Blaine's lips for a moment to signal he should stop talking. "That's why I should."

Blaine's eyebrows furrowed. "Only if you want to," he insisted.

"Stop talking," Kurt smirked, rising up a little in his chair and leaning closer.

"Just -"

Kurt silenced him the best way he knew how, and Blaine's reaction was immediate. The heart monitor beside him that had its volume set so low most didn't even notice it at first went absolutely wild, and Blaine's good hand tore from Kurt's, coming up to cup his cheek and bring him closer still, sucking on Kurt's lower lip for a moment before moving back to press both to his. Kurt felt everything in his body tingle, spark, fizzle like a firework being set off and its remains crackling in the sky.

And when he pulled away, Blaine shook his head, slid his hand over so it knotted in Kurt's hair, and pulled him down again.

* * *

When the police officers finally left Blaine's room, they took aside all the adults to talk, because not a single one of them wanted out of the conversation, but the others were too young for the police officers to be concerned with them directly. Kurt slipped away from the group the police officers were speaking too, seeing that he had his chance to slip back in with Blaine before everybody else went in, too. The police officers had been royally pissed off when the nurse had come flying into the room, interrupting them, to see if Blaine was okay because of his heart rate going crazy. Kurt had giggled to himself and then stifled it when he got off looks as she went out, shaking her head and muttering, "Hormones, making everyone insane, worrying everybody, stupid teenage boys…"

Rachel watched him slip away, but grabbed him by the wrist at the last second, and asked him in a whisper, "Did you two make up?"

He flushed red and Rachel grinned broadly, pecking his cheek and releasing him so he could peck Blaine's.

"… so we've sent people out to get him right now," the first officer said to them. "It's pretty clear that this guy is really dangerous and needs to be taken care of right now. We've got officers going to the house. There will be a trial, because the kid could be lying -"

Burt growled menacingly.

"- but from what it looks like, this guy's got no hope of getting out of jail for years to come," he finished. The relief that flooded through everyone that was listening, even the younger ones that had gathered behind their backs silently, was crippling, and several people leaned on each other and took deep breaths. "We can't exactly try him for murder, I don't think, because the kid's not dead anymore, but he needs to be locked up for a good long while."

"Thank goodness," Emma murmured, leaning into Will, who buried his face in her hair as he held her, his eyes shut tightly.

"How long do you think it'll be 'till he's fully behind bars?" Finn asked.

The officers looked grim. "He's going to stall, but we'll get him on trial as soon as possible. The kid's going to have to be present, though."

"What?" Cooper nearly shouted, causing most of them to give a start. "No, no, I don't think so! He's a kid, he's been damaged enough, and he can write down his testimony so I can speak it. He shouldn't have to be present, what do you think it'll do to him?"

"No more than what's already been done," said the second officer.

"Like he needs to go through it again!" Cooper bellowed, and Burt placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.

* * *

"So almost everyone is here now," Kurt told him, sliding the door closed with a soft click as he entered the room. "We've got a couple minutes until they're done talking to the policemen, and then you'll be swarmed by everyone who just got here who hasn't seen you yet."

Blaine wiggled his toes under the blanket adorably and beckoned him closer. Kurt chuckled at how young he acted when he was happy and how even in the very darkest of days for him, he still lit up like a Christmas tree when Kurt appeared. "Hi to you, too," he said, sitting back in the seat he'd occupied earlier. "I heard them say they're sending people after your dad right now, Blaine. You'll be fine. Nobody's going to mess with you again." And he kissed Blaine's cheek, causing him to blush again and lean his head on top of Kurt's. "Look on the bright side of all this, though," Kurt told him, making his voice chipper.

Blaine took his head back and looked at him quizzically. "I got to see you smile really big," Kurt informed him, and grinned broadly as Blaine laughed silently. But then the atmosphere was tense as they heard Cooper shouting on the other side of the door. "That can't be good," Kurt sighed.

"Are they okay?" Blaine said gravelly, struggling to sit up higher, though what he was trying to accomplish by doing so Kurt wasn't sure.

"I'm sure they're fine," Kurt told him, "and I thought I was clear when I told you to stop talking. I want that singing voice back as soon as possible. You owe me a song."

"For what?"

"Shut up," Kurt advised him. "And for nothing in particular."

And the door opened to reveal Mercedes's face peering through it. "Hey," she said softly, smiling at Blaine. "I see you look happy, that's good." She entered the room, and Quinn appeared right behind her.

"You scared me," the blonde accused him in her lilting voice, trotting next to him to fuss with the cast on his arm.

"Screw that, you scared me," Puck retaliated, strutting into the room like a true Puckerman and looking at the boy on the bed. "But I suppose if Kurt can forgive you, so can I." Kurt raised an eyebrow. "What?" Puck asked. "Like Rachel was going to keep quiet about it." Kurt rolled his eyes and Blaine tried to hide his smile, reaching for Kurt's hand and squeezing it.

* * *

It was nearing midnight when everybody arrived. Everyone was there, even people who'd gone cross-country had flown in. Blaine was surrounded with people smiling at him and worrying over him and asking questions and answering questions and he didn't think that in his whole life, save almost every time he'd been with Kurt, he'd ever been so happy. To top that off, he'd started talking again, and though his voice was no better, it didn't get worse, and no matter how many times they told him to shut up he wouldn't, so they just gave up and let him talk.

Until Sue walked back into the room and cleared her throat for attention, and when everybody started cooing at the thing she was cradling that Blaine couldn't see, he guessed enough to know she was holding Robin. "Yes, she's adorable," Sue admitted with no reluctance as everyone petted the child's head as she moved to Blaine's side. Robin had grown; her hair was dirty blond and in small waves around her head, her eyes no longer startled and confused and more analytic, observing her surroundings and trying to make sense of them. "And she's here to see Blaine."

Unfortunately, Kurt was on the side of Blaine's usable hand, so he had to pull away to reach across himself and tickle under Robin's chin. She stopped cataloging the setting for a moment to crinkle the corners of her eyes and let her mouth expand into a broad, nearly-toothless smile as she let out a high-pitched peal of laughter. Everyone "Awwwww!"ed and grinned at the baby, because everyone was in the mood to - because just a few minutes prior, they'd gotten the call that Blaine's father had been taken into custody. Blaine moved his fingers behind her ear and she laughed again, wiggling her arms and feet the way babies do when pleased and excited, and he smiled at her serenely.

He missed the look Sue was giving him as he crooned quietly to Robin. Her gaze when she looked at her daughter was full of adoration and love and, of course, concern, but her facial expression changed absolutely none as her eyes slid up to Blaine. "You're good with kids?" she asked him.

"I like to think so," he responded. "I have a cousin, she's eight, and back when I was allowed to visit with her and take care of her and stuff regularly she loved me. Adorable thing, Dorothy," he said fondly, never taking his gaze off of Robin.

"Back when you were allowed?" Will asked, puzzled.

"Back before I came out," Blaine rephrased it, and killed a bit of the mood. "My aunt and uncle decided they didn't want someone like me around their impressionable daughter, so I couldn't see her anymore." His face dropped a bit, but then he tickled Robin once more and it rose again when her golden bells of giggles escaped into the air.

"I always thought that was just Aunt Hailey ad Uncle Tobias's decision," Cooper muttered darkly. "But our parents probably had something to do with it."

"Speaking of both of those," Will brought up tentatively, "What role does your mom play in this story, Blaine?"

"Oh, she's dead," Blaine answered, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Nobody else thought it such a casual matter, and he glanced up, surprised at their reactions of gasps and confused exclamations and Cooper's measly grunt. "What?"

"Blaine!" Kurt chastised, and Blaine turned to him immediately, jaw dropping a bit when he saw Kurt's face. "Why did you never tell me? I've been to your house, I've seen pictures of her! When… how..?"

"Seen pictures of her," Blaine told him quietly, though everyone hung to his every word. "Kurt, that's all I've ever seen of her, either. She died giving birth to me. I never knew her, so I never talk about her. It's like gossiping about someone at school that you've never actually met."

"This is your mother, of course you've met her," Kurt pushed on, incredulous. "Why did you never tell me? You know about _my_ mom, why didn't you -"

"Because I don't know her," Blaine repeated. "That's not so hard to understand, is it? If you want to know what she was like, ask Cooper. At least she was there for his first four years."

"Five," Cooper corrected.

"Right, sorry," Blaine apologized. "Guys, it's not that big a deal for me, okay? She was dead before my eyes were open. I never saw her, I never talked to her, I never knew her. I've said, like, a million times at this point."

"So how would she be involved in not being able to see Dorothy?" asked Emma.

"She was highly homophobic," Cooper said, shaking his head. "I'm still not sure how we escaped that influence, Blaine."

"Probably because they were never home to impress it on us," Blaine reasoned. "Always so busy, never at home."

"That's most likely how," Cooper agreed.

Just then, Robin, who'd been growing fussy, tired of the tense atmosphere and started to cry. Blaine immediately turned to her and, faster than even Sue could, looked at her and petted her head, whispering soothing words. "No reason to do that," he told her. Though he was speaking to a baby, even when he crooned he spoke as it talking to an adult, he just made his voice tender through its raspy quietness. "Calm down a little bit, okay? Everyone's going to be just fine. Just you wait and see." Sue and everyone else watched apprehensively as he struggled to shift on the bed so he could be closer, flinching in pain as he jostled his arm too much; but he continued until he was at the edge, and he craned his neck down to kiss the little girl's crown of hair. She stopped crying and looked at him calculatingly, and then he smiled at her once more and resumed tickling her in small portions, and she squealed with glee.

* * *

"We need to talk about your room," Sue told Blaine, walking right into his hospital room five days later, carrying a two-inch binder filled with tabs and papers of all different colors and sizes. He eyed it warily. "Both of them," she specified, not wasting time on hellos or the usual "So how you feeling today?" because she knew he was fine. His voice wasn't completely okay - after so much strenuous tightening, it would be a little while longer - but he could control him volume again, it was just the never-ending raspiness, like his throat was always dry even when he'd just had a drink. But he was healing and he was happy and the trial wasn't until tomorrow, and nobody's been hurt and he was starting to relax, and Sue had to admit that he was a bit different when he wasn't hiding anything. For one, he didn't constantly smile anymore, and when he was in pain he had to remind himself to say something about it and not keep it inside. But he was happier with a lot less effort, and the smiles he gave, while not constant, were genuine. She liked it. Though it was odd, this contrast between Blaine Anderson and just Blaine, it was pleasant and honest, and it gave everyone a sense of being trustworthy.

"Hey Sue," he said as she sat down next to him. "How about my room?"

"Well, let's start with the one at your house," she began. "Now, you undoubtedly have items there, be it clothing or some sentimental keepsake nobody understands the meaning behind but you, and you need to tell us want you want out of it. I'm taking your furniture, of course, if you're going to be living with me, but everything else is up to you."

Blaine shuddered tightly, and she looked at him, wondering if she'd overstepped. "What?"

"I don't want much," he told her, looking even more wary. "But there's a box in my closet, and I don't want anyone but Kurt to get it out, because it has no lid and -"

"You want your boyfriend to see your porn collection?" she smirked.

He rolled his eyes and the corners of his lips tugged up. "It's not porn," he assured her. "It's just little things that I trust only him to take care of."

She registered the sentence. "Alright, fair enough. Where in your closet?" She opened the binder to the first page and began scribbling on the first white sheet of paper.

"To the far left, up against the wall. There's, uh, there's a label on the side that says Kurt's name, and that's how you'll know it's the box."

She raised an eyebrow and glanced at him sideways. "Blaine, what's in the box?"

He cleared his throat and winced at the brief flash of pain it brought. "Just… things," he said. "A stuffed animal, a couple pictures, some other random keepsakes. Nothing special."

"Oh, It's obvious special," she told him seriously. "Should I be aware, or will I not understand even if you tell me?"

"You wouldn't understand," he assured her quickly. "Only Kurt would."

"Alright then," she said, jotting down a note next to the box on her bulleted list:

_box, far left of closet, labeled 'Kurt' - note, private but safe_

"Alright," she continued, "anything else?"

"Um, I have some pictures throughout my room," he said, "they're framed, I want those.

_framed pictures, all_

"And I want the left half of my closet," he finished. "That's all."

"Just the left half?"

"Yeah, the right half is…" He trailed off. "Just the left half."

_left half of closet_

"Anything else?"

He paused to consider. "It's… it's not in my room, but in the attic, there's a hairbrush, a really old one, and it's gold and got little flowers painted on the handle. It's beautiful, really. It was my mom's, and Cooper put it up there for safekeeping when I started teething. I want to give that to him."

_hairbrush in attack; old, golden, flowers, was mother's_

"Is that all?" she asked. "Kurt was under the impression there was a great deal in that room. More clothes, at least?"

He shook his head. "That's all I wan…" he trailed off again, and then restarted, "That's all I can stand."

"Alright, if that's it," she said, flipping the page to the schematic of her apartment, pointing to where Robin's room was. Sue had always used the smaller of two bedrooms in case she ever needed the bigger room for anything else, like a place to hide a body, and so Robin had a room that could easily fit two people, or could be turned into two rooms if need be. Sue could make it happen, she usually got her way with everything. "This is going to be your room, and you're sharing with Robin," she told him for the second time. "The walls right now are just a neutral eggshell-white, and the carpet is dark brown so stains don't show up easily. What colors do you want?"

"It's fine as is," he said, his voice growing smaller, meeker.

"Okay," she said, not bothering to mark anything down. "Now, as to the floor plan of the room, we'll have to work something out. Robin's sleeping right in the center of the room, and she has a dresser she'll grow into eventually. I can put it in storage if it takes up too much room, but otherwise we're fine. Where do you want your bed?"

"You don't have to change anything," he said, as if he were suddenly very tired, though he'd obviously just woken up - his hair had yet to be gelled, but he didn't care. At this point, everyone had already seen his mane of curls because they usually dropped by really early and then stayed until about lunch, went off with each other to do things, and then came back until it was really late. "I'll sleep on the couch."

She looked at him tersely before realization softened her expression. "Blaine," she said, leaning in a bit closer, "I intend to have you stay with me for quite a while. Sleeping on a couch will not do."

"There's only a couple months until graduation, I'll cope." Was it her imagination, or was he paling?

"A couple months that will be spent healing and in your own bed," she said firmly. "Where do you want it?"

"I don't want to intrude," he burst suddenly, and his paling complexion flushed red with embarrassment; she'd have been amused if he hadn't started blinking madly, fighting back what was obviously tears. "Sorry," he choked.

"Blaine," she said, turning and setting the binder aside, looking him square in the eyes. "What is this about? You know you're welcome in my home, you won't be intruding. And Robin loves you, so I can't deny her her right to see you. If she's anything like me, she'll kill me for not letting you stay with us, especially when you make her happy."

He opened his mouth to respond, closed it again, opened it once more, and sighed. She waited as he composed his thoughts, but it was a long stretch of silence until he had. "I just…" he began, and then began again, as he had been lately, "I don't want to intrude because… I don't… I don't…"

"You don't what?" she asked quietly.

He took a deep breath. "I don't want to irritate you by staying with you," he exhaled in a gust. "Because the last person I lived with got irritated and hit me because of it, and I'm not saying you'll hurt me, but words hurt just as much and you do tend to shout, and I'm kind of melodramatic and might scare Robin."

She absorbed the information, and then placed her hand on his, the one he couldn't move. He looked at it, weary, and then back at her. "Let me stop you right there," she said. "Here's how it works. Yes, I shout. And yes, I'm not the best person or parent out there. But Robin loves you, and that means that, by default and also through my own unwilling emotions, I love you too." Blaine looked absolutely stunned by the words that tumbled from her lips to him. "Your father beat you because he didn't love you. People like that don't love, or if they do, they love briefly and passionately and are torn apart by it in due course. Your father only loved you if you were the kind of person he wanted to love, and when you went against that through no fault of your own, he hated you, because he's insane and prejudiced. I, on the other hand, happen to love you because you are worth loving, not because I want the person I think you are to be worth loving. I promise that while you are under my roof, you won't just have a house, or, rather, apartment, but you will have a home, and it will be a safe one."

"Wow," Blaine gasped, trying to regulate his chopped and accelerated breathing. "I… you mean that?"

"Yes, I mean it."

He blinked faster now, nodding with sharp motions to himself. "Right. I… I don't… you _mean_ that," and it wasn't a question this time, but a statement he repeated in wonderment. "Okay. Wow. Right. I keep forgetting I have a family now. I… I don't… right. And then his other hand crossed his body and rested on hers, and he was looking at her again, a smile on his mouth. "Thank you."

"No problem," she told him, gently squeezing the fingers hers were curled around, and then pulled away to pick up her binder again. "Now, where do you want your bed?"

* * *

Kurt moved through the house. He felt like shuddering every time he took a step, just now knowing what had happened in this house for years, how he'd actually said "I want to go to your house" and how dangerous it must have been for Blaine to have Skyped with him so many times. He looked past pictures of a woman who was obviously Blaine's mother, past pictures of Cooper and Blaine's father (who he'd never actually seen in person, lucky for him), past things he'd gone by several times without thinking about it, always listening to Blaine saying "my parents aren't home and won't be for a while", never knowing, never knowing…

He reached Blaine's room. He twisted the knob, and slowly, very slowly, went inside. It was exactly how he imagined Blaine leaving it; a few articles of clothing strewn about, his closet door open just a crack, those bedsheets slightly ruffled but made, a bowtie on his dresser top, and his framed picture of Kurt on his bedside table. But Kurt was here to get everything Blaine had asked for, and he looked at the list he carried.

_box, far left of closet, labeled 'Kurt' - note, private but safe_ _framed pictures, all_ _left half of closet_ _hairbrush in attack; old, golden, flowers, was mother's_

An odd list to be given, considering everything Kurt had been sure Blaine would want - his hair gel included - but if that was what Blaine wanted, Kurt wouldn't get anything more or less. He set about collecting the items, but saved the box for last, somewhat afraid yet excited about what he would find. Kurt decided that the bottle of hair gel Blaine had left beside his picture of Kurt could be snagged along with it; he piled everything neatly on the bed so the box his father had brought in that he'd taken to the attic to find the brush could have semi-pre-packed contents. But when he'd gathered everything but the brush he could hear his dad rummaging for above him and the box, he turned to the now-empty left side of the closet and looked to the wall.

There was a stack of boxes and papers and books and whatnot and on top of it, without a lid, was a box that had the word 'KURT' scribbled across it in large letters, presumably done with a Sharpie. Kurt grabbed the sides of it and hoisted it to the bed, where there was enough light to see the contents.

The first thing he pulled out was Margaret Thatcher Dog. "He kept it," he breathed, looking over the stuffed animal, smiling at its beady brown eyes and placing it gently on the pillow.

The next thing he pulled out was a scrapbook. Flipping through it, there were photos of him, of their time spent together, and little paragraphs where Blaine had written things about when the pictures were taken, like 'I was dizzy when this happened, and it was kind of like Kurt was the only thing keeping me from just falling over and fainting'. He examined each page closely, reveling in Blaine's significant scrapbooking skills, reading each little jotted-down note in that familiar handwriting, feeling love and warmth bubble in his chest and spread all over him, trickling through his veins with the speed of lead but the feeling of pure light.

When he finally set the scrapbook down, he reached inside once more, and pulled out a leather-bound, black, old journal-type thing, which was maybe only three quarters of an inch thick and with frayed, yellowed pages. But there was something in the middle of it, pressed down but propping up half the book still. He looked at the bottom and saw stems, dark green and flat, and he wondered what they were. Flipping open easily to the page in question, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from his smile from spreading too wide. It was those red and yellow flowers he'd given Blaine after his audition, when he was sure he'd get the role of Tony, and Blaine had said he loved that Kurt zigged when he thought he was going to zag. Kurt leaned down to the book and smelled the pressed flowers - they smelled like they had, but a bit of their scent was gone and replaced by the smell of old books and ink. Kurt's eyes slid to the actual page, and he found it was full of writing; that same old familiar scrawl.

So it was a journal! Kurt took the flattened flowers out and set them on the scrapbook cover, flipping to the first page to begin reading.

His heart leapt to his throat.

_Okay, so I promised myself that when it happened, I'd start writing everything down. So here I am, writing it down. Because I'm in love, just totally in love, with Kurt Hummel, and it was watching him sing a song about a dead bird, of all things. But he was beautiful, and stunning, and moving, and I'm doing a duet with him if I can, and I don't know if I'll kiss him or not because I know he likes me but I don't know if it's like that. His eyes are just captivating, and those lips are driving me crazy, and now every time I see him I just stare at him and hope he catches me so I can see him smile. He's my best friend and I love him. Sounds like something for the movies, does it not? I fell in love with my best friend._

Kurt didn't know what this was, and he was confused, but he was touched; so he kept reading.

_Anyway, the reason I promised myself I'd write this down when I fell in love was because if my dad finally loses it, if he does me in or just accidentally hits me too hard and I don't wake up, I want Kurt to see this. I want him to read my step-by-step analyzing of everything we do together, because hopefully that will set the record straight and at my funeral maybe he'll sing again and find someone else who will fall in love with his emotion like I did. So, here's how I fell in love, old journal that's the only thing my mother left me. From the very first time I laid eyes on Kurt Hummel to the last, and I'll make sure to record new developments if possible so you continue to understand what's going on._  
_For anyone reading: This is how love feels._  
_For Kurt, if he's reading this: THIS IS HOW LOVE FEELS._

Kurt put his hand over his mouth, and slowly began reading.

It was detailed. Beautifully detailed, intricate and exquisite, giving extra thoughts and emotions and doubt and ideas that had been in Blaine's head when they'd interacted. How many times had Kurt wished for something like this, to know what he was thinking? And now he could. And he felt tears well up in his eyes, because as he progressed, Blaine seemed to delve further and further into everything good that Kurt was, but he wasn't afraid to bring up the bad, either. He saw that Kurt had flaws and he wasn't stupid enough to ignore them. He loved them instead. And he praised Kurt and his voice and his fashion sense and his support and his love and his father and his friends; and Kurt found that as the tale wove on, he had been the main reason why Blaine had found the abuse endurable.

_Yesterday when I got home, my dad knocked me into the coffee table. I hit my head and I didn't wake up until this morning, and the first thing I thought about was Kurt. I didn't care about my head or the rest of me or that I had another bruise to hide that's located on my left forearm. I wanted to know if Kurt had had a good night without me._

He shook, trembled, quivered. He'd doubted Blaine, hated Blaine, been furious with Blaine, all for cheating on him. But as he neared the section when he realized what was going to happen, he couldn't stop himself from reading Blaine's reaction to Chandler.

_I feel so weak. Just so defeated. My dad hit me again, on my shoulder. I'll cover it with my clothes, so it won't show, which is good because this time I think he popped a blood vessel. But that's nothing. I feel like I've just absolutely died. Kurt says we'll be okay and that he's sorry and that it doesn't count but I can't agree. I can't. It feels like he's moving on with his life and doesn't want me to be a part of it anymore. And he says otherwise out loud but he defends his actions and he won't stop texting Chandler, who seems more serious about him than I've expressed out loud to him and I don't make him feel good anymore. Is this what I get trying to distance myself from more hurt? But it's not his fault, I'm just not good enough. I hope Chandler is. Kurt deserves the best and if he's not happy with me, I'm not going to force him to stick with me. I just feel so useless, you know? I've worked so hard to be happy and strong and supportive and now that the thing that kept me going doesn't even want me anymore I'm just limp and wrung-out and I can't stop crying._

And, true to his written words, there were splotches of tears on the wrinkled page. Kurt's joined them, but he forged on, knowing things get better, or, at least, hoping they do.

But to his horror, as he adventured through the pages, Chandler's name was everywhere, popping up in comparisons, contrasting different words, analyzing every small thing, worrying if he'd be good enough. He never stopped the anxiety, the horror, the dead-inside feeling, no matter what he did. Through every mistake there were accompanying teardrops, through every entry there were scribbled-out lines. Kurt despised himself for making Blaine feel so awful, and then remembered that that's how he'd felt, and wondered what had possessed Blaine to cheat on him when Kurt's cheating had hurt him so badly. So he read as fast as he could until he reached the desired passage.

_It feels like he's moving on with his life and doesn't want me to be a part of it anymore._

Kurt gulped. He recognized that line.

_New York is so far away, filled with so many people, people who aren't as prejudiced as the ones down here. Someone, or everyone, is sure to fall in love with him. And it seems like he's falling out of love with me. He called me in school and said he missed me and he interrupted me talking and hung up right in the middle of my telling him I loved him. I don't know whether he didn't want to hear it or didn't want to say it back. Both, probably. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I've ruined everything, spoiled everything, he's probably there with Chandler, I remember him texting Kurt about New York. No, but he's faithful. He's just waiting for the right time to dump me because he doesn't want to hurt me too badly because he's so kind. I've done this to myself, I deserve this. I'm no Chandler, I don't make him feel good anymore. I need… I need to get away, stop thinking about this._

The next passage needed no explanation; Kurt couldn't bring himself to read all the self-loathing Blaine had spilled onto the pages.

* * *

Blaine looked over at his phone. He would have known it was from Kurt with or without the ringtone and Caller ID - he'd been waiting for when Kurt would find it. He'd held out hope, of course, for Kurt to not snoop and just pack the box, but he'd known he would sift through it to satiate his curiosity. He sighed wearily, knowing exactly what Kurt was going to say. But he reached over and picked it up, accepting the call and holding it to his ear. "Kurt."

"This isn't okay, Blaine!" Kurt said into the phone, and Blaine could hear he was crying. He sagged from his rigid form for a moment at the sound of it. "This is _not_ okay!"

"You found the journal," Blaine didn't even have to guess.

"Yes, I found the journal!" Kurt exclaimed. "And the last time you updated it was after you surprised me in New York for the first time!"

"I know," he responded. "Kurt -"

"And I'll be the first to say you should do something with this writing because frankly it's absolutely beautiful, but Blaine, this is the saddest freakin' book I've ever read and I already know that there's a better ending than the one you wrote down."

"I haven't had a chance to write any more updates," he explained wearily.

"I'm coming over right now with this journal and I am going to watch you write down that you don't hate yourself and that I don't hate you and that you were wrong and I was wrong but everything is okay right now!"

"I'll write in it, Kurt," he agreed weakly.

"Blaine…" Kurt's voice lost its edge of desperation. "I, um… reading this, I didn't know you were thinking so much during our times together."

"That's kind of the point."

"This is really sweet, Blaine. This whole book. It's really sweet."

Blaine shrugged, and then remembered Kurt couldn't see him. "_You're_ really sweet."

"I love you," Kurt told him, honesty breaking his voice. "A lot. I love you a lot."

"You called right after reading the journal, didn't you?" Blaine asked, humor trickling into his words.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Didn't bother looking at the other papers I had in the box?"

There was a rustling sound, and Kurt gasped. "Oh."

"Too much?" he asked. "Too soon, maybe?"

"No, it's…" Kurt seemed speechless, and Blaine heard him turn the page and gasp again. "I… _Blaine_."

"When we talked about getting married and living together and just spending the rest of our lives with each other," Blaine told him seriously, "I wrote it all down in the journal, and then I wrote it all down and started actually planning it. I hope you don't mind the bad drawings, I'm not very good at art."

"_Blaine_."

"Yes?"

"This is perfect."

"Does it make up for the story state of that journal?"

"Yes, definitely. Oh my god, Blaine. Oh, wow, you even have the lilies, and there's the stage, and the guest of honor seats for all our friends and family, and the carpet, and everything… you remembered every tiny little detail." Kurt was obviously awed and obviously not done crying.

"I couldn't forget them," Blaine admitted. "Everything piled up in my head until I had to put it on paper. I had our clothes designed a couple pages after the floor plan of the wedding and the list of guests, but I'm not like you, they're not very good." Kurt was flipping madly past a few pages and then paused again.

"Why is my hair orange?"

Blaine laughed outright. "I couldn't find the brown colored pencil."

"Oh. And is that why your hair is gray?"

"Yeah, couldn't find -"

"- the black one," Kurt finished for him in a murmur. "And you remembered that I wanted elbow-length sleeves? And why are you in just a normal white polo with a black vest?"

"I figured that we'd get married like we said, after we'd been living with each other for at least a year, and you might want me a little outside my normal fashion zone."

"Your clothes are adorable. And this would be fine if you were the one wearing the bowtie."

"You look adorable in bowties."

"I look adorable in anything, mister. _You_ look adorable in bowties."

* * *

"Crutches," muttered Blaine. "Why couldn't they have given me crutches?"

"It's not so bad," said Artie and Quinn in synchronization, sharing a glance. Blaine looked at the world from much lower than he was used to. Sitting in a wheel chair while he could still move his legs irritated him; he didn't want to go to the trial at all, let alone in a way that would make his father proud of what he'd done.

"They couldn't give you crutches because of your arm," Kurt repeated, his voice firm, from behind Blaine, where he was wheeling him through the hall.

"Crutches would be less mortifying," he muttered again.

"It's not mortifying," Artie said defensively. "It's not a bad thing to be in a wheelchair. And you'll be out of it faster than Quinn was out of hers. You'll be fine. You'll walk."

"Sorry," Blaine turned to him apologetically. "I didn't mean -"

"Yes you did," Artie said, but there was nothing more than pleasantry in his tone. "But that's alright. At least I get pity parties. The rest of you only get normal parties, what fun is that?"

Blaine laughed at his metaphor and hit Artie's fist with his own when he held it out.

* * *

"Everyone's here for the trial," Sue told Blaine seriously, taking Robin from his arms, where she'd been giggling and smiling for about fifteen minutes. "Schuester, Pillsbury, all your Glee Club friends. They're all here."

"Must irritate you to no end," he commented weakly, trying to brace himself to go through the doors and face the man who'd killed him. It didn't seem to be doing much for him. His mind buzzed with fears, his heart thudded unevenly. The whole reason he wasn't totally deteriorating was because he'd just held Robin and hadn't wanted her to be upset.

Sue looked around the group with a sneer. "No kidding. So much stupid and teenage hormones in the room."

Blaine reached up to lay his hand on her elbow, and she looked back to him. For a moment, he let the facade slip down, and he felt all the worry and fear project itself onto his face. "You won't let him get close to me, right?" he whispered, afraid of voicing the concern any louder than a breath.

Sue leaned down so she was closer to him, her words nearly silent as she responded, "If he tries, I'll be the next one on trial."

* * *

"Coop," Blaine beckoned to his brother even though he was right next to him. "Coop, come here."

"What?" Cooper asked, getting on one knee beside him. "Everything okay?"

The club milled about around them, relief expressed on every face, release through all body language, easy-going joy emanating from their conversations. Nobody had noticed Blaine slip away from them to the corner of the room where they'd been instructed to wait. The verdict had been, as was expected, guilty. Blaine suspected how hard he'd been fighting tears had had a significant impact on the decision. But his stomach was rolling uncomfortably, churning and squirming inside him, and his eyes were watering though he didn't feel like crying, and his throat was tensing at random moments again so his voice kept fading in and out. Nausea twisted his insides, and to put it in simple terms, he felt sick; he accredited the feeling to his father's glare and malevolent shouting.

"No," he said, his hand latching on to Cooper's as tight as it possibly could. "I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"It's just excess fear," Cooper assured him after studying him for a moment. "You kept it together in there and you wanted to fall apart, and now that you're not fighting it anymore, even though you no longer feel like doing it, your body still has to. It's hysterics, Blaine. They happen to a lot of people."

"That was awful," Blaine choked, and Cooper knew he meant the trial.

"Yes, it was," Cooper's glare turned hard and toward the direction their father had been taken. "But he can't hurt anymore anymore, Squirt. You're going to be fine."

"I don't feel fine," he retorted, his stomach lurching sickeningly, and he couldn't tell if bile had risen in his throat or if it was a lump that formed before crying.

"You will," Cooper said, rubbing his back soothingly and squeezing his hand harder. "Just squeeze my hand until your fingers start cramping."

"Why?" he asked, looking at him quizzically, though everything was blurred.

"It's a technique to release tension," Cooper answered. "As is pinching the bridge of your nose, but I thought we'd try this first."

"Are you sure?" Blaine inquired slowly; not because he was suspicious, but because he wanted not to slur the words. "I'm pretty strong."

"I'll squeeze back," Cooper replied.

And so Blaine tightened his grip, crushing Cooper's fingers against one another, flexing his muscles and denting his pressure points from the straining, and he glared at Cooper's hand as if it were his father and his fingers were a cobra, slowly compressing the life from its victim. He felt Cooper squeeze back, and the pain where he pressed in was welcome. He found that his eyes cleared of their hot liquid, and that his stomach somewhat settled; he looked at Cooper gratefully when his fingers finally began to cramp and he released him. "Jesus," Cooper hissed, wiggling his fingers, which were stark-white. "You are strong."

Blaine chuckled. "I told you."

* * *

"I'm telling you, Kurt, that you should wear a bowtie," Blaine insisted for what must have been the thousandth time. "You're absolutely stunning as is but a bowtie might make you look a little bit like a cute little puppy with a collar."

"A _puppy_? Blaine Anderson, have you ever looked in a mirror? You're a puppy even without bowties!"

"So why would I wear one? You should, we should switch things up."

"This is our wedding day we're talking about, Blaine. I am not switching things up for the most important day of my life."

"Now you're just flattering me."

* * *

_I've not updated recently, but I need to now. Kurt found the journal and is forcing me to write in it. Confused? I'd be surprised if you weren't. But I'll tell you how it happened. I'll tell you everything, and I stand by what I said before, to the reader and to Kurt (who happens to be both in this case); This is what love feels like._

* * *

"So here we are," Sue said, gesturing to the hospital parking lot. "You're out of the hospital and your dad's in jail, so all you annoying hormone-spreaders can hop back on your planes and get out of here now."

"Sue," groaned Will, but the graduates laughed.

"I'm still in a wheelchair," Blaine sighed, looking down at himself. "Are you sure none of you have crutches lying around? I'd kind of prefer that."

"You are in a wheelchair and you're staying in that wheelchair," Cooper said forcefully, his hand resting on Blaine's shoulder. "Until you heal, that is. At least now you go to school again."

"Great," he said with a lot of false enthusiasm.

"We'll all be there," Emma reminded him. Blaine was actually glad that on the day he'd been released, they hadn't told anyone but the adults (or, rather, the people Blaine still thought of as adults), because he didn't want the weepy congratulations or the enthusiastic cheers or the heartfelt sympathy. He didn't want to be sitting down. He didn't want to have on seventy-five percent of his voice eighty percent of the time. He didn't want to have to watch people's expressions as he went by, his story undoubtedly told to the whole school by now. He didn't want people looking at him like he was broken. But he knew that was what was going to happen. "You've got a friend in nearly every class, Blaine. And we'll make sure nothing happens. You've got a place to stay and people who love you."

"Yeah," Blaine sighed again, smiling at her. "You don't have to keep tabs on me all the time, though. I'll be okay."

"You're damn right you will be," Cooper said.

* * *

"Thanks," Blaine said again as Sue wheeled him down her apartment level's hallway toward her door.

"Don't mention it," she said, and stopped outside what he presumed was where he'd be staying. "Now I have a few rules you need to be aware of. One - if Robin starts crying in the middle of the night, and I don't come in, you are in charge of calming her down. Two - any dirty laundry lying around will not be permitted. Three - if you insist on Skyping with Porcelain every night, please do so while I am otherwise occupied, or I will have to say something embarrassing just to satiate my desire to. Four - if you want those Glee Clubbers to come over, the answer is no. And five - if my apartment starts to reek of that raspberry hair gel, you're going back to Schuester's. Got it?"

Blaine looked at her fondly. "That's a bunch of bull, Sue, and we both know it. Sure, I'll calm Robin down. Okay, I'll take care of my laundry. But we both know that if I need a friend, you won't deny me one, and that you have no problem with me talking to Kurt, and that you won't ever send me to Mr. Schue's place."

She looked down at him, fighting back a smile. "You win this time," she admitted begrudgingly, and then opened the door.

"SURPRISE!" a great chorus of voice bombarded him, and Sue finally succeeded fighting her smile.

"SURPRISE!" someone else said, someone who obviously had their mouth full.

"Puck," Quinn scolded, "you were late."

"So? I'm eating."

"Blaine was supposed to get the first slice of cake, Puck."

Sue reached back behind Blaine and pushed him forward, into the room. Sue's apartment was spacious, and decorated with streamers and balloons, none of which, he was both glad and irritated to see, were on the ground. Everyone who'd supported him over this period of time - so basically, his family - was there, with their hands up in the air and behind furniture. Or, in Puck's case, eating a slice of cake that was sitting on the counter. "What's this?" he asked slowly, absorbing everything, looking around. "What are we celebrating?"

"Your safety and well-being," said Will from beside the cake, placing a restraining hand on Puck's wrist as he raised his fork to take another bite. He gave Will a disappointed look and returned it to the plate ruefully.

"Oh," Blaine said.

"Also," Kurt added, and Blaine looked to those colorful-but-of-what-color-exactly eyes, slightly mesmerized by them as always, "the fact that you're a zombie."

"An adorable zombie," chimed Rachel, "but a zombie nonetheless."

"Which is pretty wicked," Finn admitted from beside her.

"I'm not a zombie," he snorted.

"You were dead and came back to life," Artie said. "That's pretty zombie, dude."

"Does this mean I can be excused for acts of cannibalism?" he asked innocently. Sue put her hand in front of her mouth and bit back a peal of laughter.

"No, I asked the same question," Brittany told him.

"Damn," he sighed, as if remorseful of the news. "Well, can I at least eat cake?"

"Yeah," Puck said through another mouthful.

* * *

Kurt was the only one that remained at the Sylvester apartment into the night. When it hit two A.M., everyone but him had left (well, that and Puck, who was still trying to shove the last remnants of the cake in his mouth). But he stayed, specifically asking Sue if he could spend the night while promising that they wouldn't wake her up (he had been _so_ embarrassed when she'd winked at Blaine afterwards) and thankfully, Blaine's bed was unoccupied for everyone but him. Blaine was actually writing in the journal when Kurt came in, having been unable to resist cleaning up the mess the party had made because it was totally spoiling the interior design of the place. Kurt crawled into bed beside him and leaned his head on his shoulder, reading the words Blaine wrote down as he wrote them. Blaine smiled and leaned his own head on Kurt's, his cheek pressing on his hair, and he didn't stop or slow down.

_I got out of the hospital today. I'm staying with Sue, like I said. She's turning out to be a pretty cool guardian. I guess what I really needed this whole time was a little parental guidance, because she's acting like the mom I always wanted to know, or the person I wished my father had been. And Robin is sleeping next to me in her crib. I helped put her to sleep, you know. With my voice coming back, I sang to her, but I had to do it in a low key, otherwise my falsetto got way too whiny to sound good. She still loved it. And they threw a party for me, too. Everyone was here. Kurt especially. He's still here, actually, looking over my shoulder as I write this_

"Blaine," said Kurt, exasperated, "you don't need to put that in there."

"On the contrary," Blaine disagreed, his pen freezing before he could end the sentence with a period, poised in midair. "I need to put everything about you in here."

"When we get everything settled," Kurt muttered, with obvious discomfort. Blaine's hand dropped, and he dotted the period before shutting the book, leaning away slightly to look at Kurt inquisitively. Kurt picked up his head again and looked at his feet.

"Settled?" Blaine asked. "I thought everything _was_ settled."

"Blaine…" he trailed off. "I'm going back to New York tomorrow with Rachel, and you know that. All the graduates are going away again. Well, except for Finn, but I wasn't counting him. Now that we know you're going to be fine, we have our own lives to get back to. And what happens if you start feeling like you're not part of mine again?"

There was a lengthy stretch of time, during which neither could stand to look at the other.

"Ah," he said finally.

"I don't think you'll do it again," Kurt assured him, still avoiding eye contact like the plague. "But trusting you more than I do at the moment if kind of difficult."

"You trust me?" Shock.

"Yeah. I kissed you, didn't I? As much as I good this past week or so."

"That doesn't mean you trust me, Kurt. But it's nice to know you do." Blaine's voice was reverent. "What… what brought on the change?"

"Reading the journal," Kurt answered simply. "I knew you were sorry, but I never… I couldn't read your mind before, and then I could. You put everything in there, and I read everything, and I understood how much you needed someone to love you and how horrible it was when I didn't, and how much you hated yourself for what you'd done, and sweetheart, it's impossible not to trust a person when you understand everything about them and their motives."

"I trust you completely," Blaine told him.

"No, you don't," Kurt said quietly. "You compare yourself with Chandler every single time we're together. I should know. I read your thoughts."

Another pause. "I trust you," he said. "I don't trust _me_. That's all."

"But the reason you don't trust yourself is because of what I did," Kurt argued. "I've hurt you and it's had a long-lasting impression. It's a fierce habit you can't break, wondering if he could make me happier than you are when we're together. When you did it to me, it hurt, but it never once crossed my mind it was because I wasn't good enough, whereas that was the first thing you came to."

"That's just because I was environmentally influenced into believing that until you came along and said differently," Blaine said. "And then when I screwed up with you, nobody was telling me otherwise anymore, and I just felt -"

"Useless and broken and you cried a lot," Kurt said tersely. "I know."

Blaine paused. "Kurt, what's the point of this talk?"

"The point is that I won't always have time to say I love you," Kurt refrained from shouting in frustration, hating how angry he was getting at his own words. "I won't always have time to answer your calls, or respond to your texts. I'll always have time to want to do those things, but not to do them. That's proven to be a lot more than you can handle."

"No," Blaine disagreed, shaking his head. "What was more than I could handle was covering up bruises and cuts every day and wearing a smile while the reason I was smiling was slipping away from me. Kurt, I have a family that loves me now. If I can't turn to you, I can turn to them, and I know that - finally, but I know it. I can handle it this time, I'm absolutely positive of it, and I have no reason to hide anything anymore, so why would I lie?"

"There's…" Kurt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "There's so much. Rebuilding, finding that same trust again…" He released his nose and his hand dropped on top of Blaine's, and without thinking about it, he intertwined their fingers. "And there's talking, and working, and healing, and it's a long process, and… and can we just skip it?" Blaine's head rested on his again. "Can we just skip to the part where you're just kissing me and it feels right to kiss you back?"

"I don't know," Blaine replied honestly. "But we can see."

Blaine turned to him, and Kurt looked at him, and there he was, those topaz eyes glittering, his gelled hair coming out of its stiff form, his face waiting for permission as it came closer. Kurt closed his eyes just in time to feel Blaine's soft lips meet him gently, pressing against his, small torrents of electricity bubbling from the contact throughout his head, which went light. And then Blaine pulled away, and Kurt's eyes fluttered open again. "Yes," he answered his own question. "Yes, we can."

* * *

Sue was awakened by the sound of high-pitched crying, and she bounded out of bed, not caring about what Robin was crying about, and no matter how many times it happened she was never irritated about losing sleep over caring for her daughter. But just as she was almost in the room, the crying changed to laughter, and then died down with happy gurgling sounds. She listened closer, and hear muffled, tired voices. "It's six in the morning," one of them said. "She's like an alarm clock."

"Cutest alarm clock I've ever seen," said the other fondly. "And I get to live with her, so ha."

Sue turned the knob slowly and crept the door open a crack, peering her head in. Blaine and Kurt were standing with their backs to her, obviously holding Robin in their arms, because Kurt was behind Blaine, his arms wrapping around his waist, his chin resting on his shoulder, as Blaine's arms jutted out, like they would if he were carrying a flower box. Robin. They were swaying side to side slowly, gently, rocking the small little girl to sleep - if she would just stop giggling. "I'm not that funny-looking, am I?" Blaine asked. "I mean, I know I've got no hair gel in anymore, but really, it can't be that bad."

"Maybe she thinks you're some darker form of broccoli and is giggling because hearing broccoli talk is funny," Kurt suggested.

"That would not be funny, that would be terrifying," Blaine said. "And I've got you to thank for the broccoli-hair, Mr. Hummel. Why did you insist we take a shower?"

"I insisted you take a shower," Kurt specified. "You needed help getting clean with those casts and injuries, and I obliged."

"Robin doesn't seem to mind the cast," Blaine said, and looking closer, Sue could see that whenever Blaine shifted to his right leg, he depended on Kurt to hold him up.

"You're really good with her," Kurt remarked, pressing his lips to Blaine's cheek.

"I beg to differ. She's good with me. The baby is always the one in charge."

"Just wait until she's a toddler," Kurt said. "That's when you need to start actually laying down the law."

"I always wanted to have kids," Blaine admitted almost silently, seemingly ashamed of the sentence. "But then I figured out I was gay, and I was really disappointed, because I'd never have a kid composed of just the genes of my partner and I, you know? And when I came out, my dad used my want for kids as a kind of argument to force me into being straight. And when he started hitting me regularly I was scared I might adopt one or something one day and be a horrible dad, like mine was."

"You'd never be like him," Kurt whispered, and it was the most comforting and yet condescending tone Sue'd ever heard, which was apparently exactly what Blaine needed. "You love things too much to hurt them like that. You'll be a fantastic dad, and we can still have kids. We might want to wait until we're married, though."

"I still maintain that you _will_ be wearing the bowtie."

Sue closed the door behind her, a warm and kind of fuzzy feeling spreading over her, the same one she'd felt when she'd seen Robin for the first time - screaming and covered in blood, she'd still been the most wonderful and perfect thing Sue had ever seen. Looking at Blaine felt like that now, too, and she knew it was only a matter of time before Porcelain made that same fuzzy feeling occur. "Damn," she murmured. She honestly cared about the kids. And seeing how tender they were with each other, and with Robin, and how they still joked and managed to talk about serious things at the same time - it was the kind of relationship she'd never been able to gag at when she walked past it out in public, no matter how hard she tried.

And so she went back to her bedroom after hearing through the door, "Shh, Kurt, she's asleep again. Don't wake her. She might be having a good dream that she won't remember later," and she began to get ready for the day.

* * *

That day, Blaine rode to school with Sue after leaving Robin with the day-sitter (who Blaine had been instructed to be suspicious of at all times), and he began to understand why she'd wanted to be a mother. He didn't press her for questions and she didn't give answers, but tiny little reactions were enough. When he asked why she'd decided to have a kid, she'd pursed her lips, but her pupils had dilated, which indicated she was fascinated by the ideas the words put in her head. When he asked what her favorite part about being a mother was, she'd answered, "Robin," and her voice had been totally honest. Blaine had the feeling she was refraining from saying, "And you."

And when they arrived at the school, Blaine refused to let her help him get into his wheelchair, wanting to do something himself. And then he didn't let her push him; he used his own arms to propel himself forward. She said nothing against it, but didn't say anything like "You think that's hard? Try _, that's hard" when he muttered about the difficult of going up the ramp. When he got to the top, she was still waiting for him. "You don't have to wait on me," he told her, secretly pleased that she had.

"Yes, I do," she sighed with distaste.

* * *

"Hey man," Artie greeted Blaine as he rolled into the chorus room. He noticed that Blaine seemed to have no trouble with the upper arm strength needed for rotating the wheels with consistency, but he was still focusing intently at the ground in front of him as he moved. "What's up?" Then Artie noticed that Blaine wasn't looking back at him or any of the rest of them because his neck was held at an odd angle, craned forward awkwardly, and stiff. "Your neck okay?" Blaine shook his head in sharp, angular motions, and then glanced up. "Voice?" Artie guessed. Blaine shook his head again. Artie looked closer, and saw that his neck was only like that because his shoulders were hunched forward. He nodded understanding. "You tipped over backwards."

"Damn it," Blaine cursed in his own direction, ceasing the beginnings of an onslaught of questions from the New Directions wanting to know if he was alright. "How do you do this, Artie? I hate this."

"Hit your head?" Artie asked. "Even the best of us fall off the wagon, bro. Or the wheelchair. Either works. Both hurt."

Blaine shook his head again, but not in disagreement, just in pity. Artie patted his back, understanding why he was hunched forward so tightly - so as to not lean too far back again - and then retracted his hand as footsteps approached. But they weren't heavy, like Finn's should have been, and they were fast, like someone was bolting to the room. And then Kurt was there. "Blaine," he choked, and it was easy for everyone to see he was sobbing. "Blaine, m-make them stop lying."

"Kurt," Blaine exhaled almost as if it caused him pain to see Kurt as he was. He held open his arms. "Come here, Kurt. It's okay." He didn't ask what happened, he didn't demand answers, he didn't pester the boy who was obviously upset with things he didn't want to answer; and Artie turned back to the group of people who'd shouted at Kurt's horrible entrance and shushed them forcefully as Kurt shot into Blaine's arms. Artie always wondered what it looked like having someone sit on your lap in a wheelchair. As it turns out, it wasn't that bad. Except for the fact that though Blaine wrapped his arms around Kurt's midsection and was whispering small reassurances to him Kurt's tears covered his cheeks completely and he gasped and sputtered incomprehensible sentences, his stomach muscles moving twice as fast as he tried to get enough air both to fuel his unheard words and to calm down; neither worked. Artie had to fight not to cry just looking at Kurt; he was burning with curiosity about what had made Kurt react like this. The last time he'd seen Kurt break this badly was after he'd sung I Want to Hold Your Hand.

A horrible thought crossed his mind and he couldn't discard it.

It seemed to strengthen his suspicions when Finn and Carole appeared in the door. The group was silent, everyone staring at Kurt and Blaine, who were rocking slowly from the waist up together in what appeared to be soothing motions. Kurt's hands were so firmly latched to Blaine's shirt Artie was afraid his fingers would go through the fabric. Carole was crying, too, and it was the most defeated he'd seen someone look (before this last week, with the whole thing about abuse and death and whatnot), and Finn just looked stunned. "Kurt?" Finn asked blankly, looking around but seeing nothing, his eyes glassed over and far away.

"STOP LYING!" Kurt screamed at them through his tears, and Blaine reached up to pet his hair softly, murmuring gentle nothings to him.

"I wish we were lying, sweetheart," Carole said, covering her mouth with her hand for a second.

"Okay, what is going on?" Kitty exclaimed. "I've known Kurt for, like, a week, and even _I_ hate seeing him cry, so tell me how to make it stop!"

"You could bring Burt back from the dead," Finn suggested, not even bothering to understand how cruel his words were.

"DEAD!" Kurt screamed, his voice desperately mocking the word. "HE ISN'T DEAD, HE PROMISED ME HE'D BE THERE TO SEE ME MEET MY DESTINY! _YOU'RE LYING_!"

Blaine had frozen in his act of comforting Kurt. Everyone had frozen, actually. Carole was crying, Kurt was in total hysterics, Finn was an empty shell, and they heard more footsteps coming down the hall before Will and Emma appeared, wide-eyed and grief-stricken. "Dead?" Artie whispered, not understanding. His throat clogged, his eyes burned, because he'd only ever met the man once but the impression he'd had on all of them through his sons was something worth crying over when lost.

"What the hell do you mean, _dead_?" Sam demanded.

"Another heart attack," Carole choked, and Will put his hand on her shoulder comfortingly as Emma took Finn's hand and squeezed it. Everything has an end, even family, or friends, and there's really nothing anyone can do to stop it but pretend like things go on forever.

Artie was almost afraid to look at Blaine, and realized he should have been a lot more than he had been. Blaine's eyes were absolutely colorless. Artie had known that they had a tendency to darken into a dark, murky brown when he was upset - he'd seen plenty of that this past week - but he'd never seen them just go so dark it was impossible to distinguish between them and the iris. Those dulled eyes were downcast and the only color that remained was in the one sparkling, crystalline tear that trekked its way down his ashen cheek. His jaw was loose but didn't jut out, and it seemed like everything about him was sagging. And Kurt was shaking so hard the bolts on Blaine's wheelchair were rattling.

When Blaine spoke, it was the same voice Artie had grown accustomed to the whole time he'd known him. It was awful. The only time he'd look so in control of his emotions was when he felt pain he couldn't cope with, he could only hide. What made it worse was that he was only hiding it now because Kurt needed him to; he was acting for the purpose of the people he loved and suffering in the process. Again. "Kurt, listen to me," he said. "You will be okay. Is that understood?"

"I want my dad!" Kurt sobbed into his shoulder pathetically. "I don't want to be an orphan, I want him to be here! I want my dad!"

"I want him, too," Blaine told him honestly, leaning his head on top of Kurt's weakly. "But we can't have him. We have memories, and if we treat them right, they won't go away. But you have me, and I have you. That's _got_ to be enough."

* * *

_Everything has an end, even family, or friends, and there's really nothing anyone can do to stop it but pretend like things go on forever. But eventually you're faced with the fact that it has ended and it's not there anymore and you are, or that it will be there and you won't be. Eventually, everything collapses._

_In every building there are several points of structure. Several places where the weight is supported, where, if one thing is to fail, another should take its place until it can be fixed. People aren't like that. People build themselves on one thing, one main thing, and even if it comes from two different sources, it's still one support. Usually, we have a knack for picking the one thing that will always be there and be constant and be loving. Sometimes we make mistakes in the support we choose, and other times we think we do but we don't. We build everything in ourselves around that one point._

_There are different ways of going about this. We all have a support from the first time we open our eyes to the last time we close them. We all have one face, or one name, or one object, that's more a symbol for 'home' than anything else. Sometimes that support leaves us, and if we've only been using it for a short amount of time and not that heavily, we find a new support fairly quickly. Sometimes that happens a lot, until you're constantly finding new supports so often that you get sick of having to build on someone or something else and you just start crawling into yourself to get away from everyone. Sometimes that only happens once or twice, and you're okay in the end._

_Of course, sometimes you spend years depending with everything in your heart on that support, and it's torn from you, and you've spent so long building who you are and want to be around that support that you can only cling to the past in the hopes that it will come back, and other supports are a blind spot for you until you somehow are scared enough of the future to look ahead once more. Sometimes, instead of clinging to the past, you look only into the future, and shy from the past because you know you'll be unable to stand on your own if you pretend that losing the support didn't hurt you. In that case, the building falls, but the outside layer of bricks stays intact - until you find someone who can fix the inside again. And sometimes you live only in the present, not looking back or looking ahead because anything other than right now, this very moment, where you can imagine that time is nonexistent and so you're frozen, incapable of either continuing to build or collapsing inward._

_Other times, you spend nearly your whole life with one constant, with one variable that never changes, with one support, that may grow weary and worn-out but never leaves. And you may get upset at times, but in your core you're never truly unhappy._

_And that's where the support is - in your core. In the very center of everything you are, have been, and will be. For someone to be that support, they have to know everything about you to the point where they become a part of you. For something to be that support, you have to hold it in remembrance of something or hope for something to come so strong that to lose that dream or that memory would crush you. What about friends, and family, and people who care? They're supports, alright, but they're up on higher floors. They only support the amount of you they know, and maybe someone reaches the lobby, but the person who ventures down into the basement and decides it's really not such a bad place is the only one that holds your whole life up._

_Everything is built around something else. Nobody is totally independent. Even if you're your own support, you rely on yourself to an extent you can't anyone else. It happens. Not often, but it happens. _

_Burt was Kurt's support. First he had his mother, and then he and his dad began rebuilding each other again. I started supporting the upper floors, moving further down as I got closer, but I never went into the basement, maybe because mine is such a terrifying place. But Kurt's my support, and I still have him. He doesn't have his dad. His dad was one level away from being my support, if I'd have lost Kurt, but my whole life isn't shattered. Just the top of it. The base is still there, the foundation is still whole. Kurt has no foundation anymore, and he's eroding away. He's slipping through my fingers and nothing's pulling him back and it's killing me like it's already killed him._

_Why does everything end? Because supports wear out and need replaced. Because nobody's there to maintain the building. Because people abandon hope at the old dejected house or restaurant they see and just look at it sadly as they pass by. Everything ends because everything stops caring at some point. Everything ends because nothing can go on forever; nothing is built to, nothing is made to whether the entire future. Not even the future is made to do that. Everything ends because nothing begins._

Blaine closed the journal and looked up as Kurt entered the room again. Every bone in his body screamed at him to stand and guide Kurt to the bed, but he couldn't support his own weight yet, his leg was still badly broken. So he stretched out his hand as far as he could.

Kurt had gone into the bathroom an hour or so ago, and when he emerged, his hair was matted from the shower and small droplets of glistening water shone on his nose or arms when he moved, shifting the light. He was wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirt, standard bedroom apparel for him, but the look on his face was completely lost, as if he'd been on a road somewhere and then he suddenly went blind and couldn't see anything. But he stumbled toward Blaine's hand, reaching out for it clumsily and grasping it weakly, falling onto the bed as if actually made of Porcelain and not caring if he broke anymore. Blaine pulled him as close as possible before Kurt rolled onto his side right up next to him, his head resting directly over Blaine's heart, his hands laying across his stomach, his skin warm to the touch from absorbing the hot water.

Blaine would have asked him if he was sure he wanted to stay the night there when he did have his own bed and his best friend and everyone else still here (he and Rachel had been at the airport when he'd gotten the call, and they were the first ones to try to leave - everyone else was notified and immediately canceled any leaving plans), but he knew Kurt couldn't bear two things: one, going back to the house, and two, being without Blaine.

Blaine would have cried if he felt like he should have. But when, and only when, the time came for Kurt needing someone to cry _with_ instead of _on_, he would let himself.

"Blaine," Kurt murmured.

"Kurt," he said in response.

"I don't want to lose anything else."

"I don't want to lose you either."

"Loving hurts."

"I don't think so," Blaine told him quietly, earnestly, whispering to him so as to not be abrasive - and to hide his cracking voice. "I think losing love hurts. Loving doesn't make you happy or sad, really; I'm pretty sure it just gives you a greater chance of feeling something either way depending on who you are."

"Why me?" Kurt's voice was muffled on his chest and Blaine half-feared he'd start that same hysterical crying that had driven him mad earlier with grief and sorrow and pain just looking at the agony he'd been in.

"That's not what you're asking yourself," Blaine hushed, "is it?"

"No," Kurt admitted somberly, his voice breaking yet again when he corrected himself. "Why _not_ me?"

"Because you're the only thing I have left," Blaine answered. "The world isn't inherently bad, Kurt. It messes up a lot, but it tries to make up for it. We've both been through… things we didn't deserve to have been through. But we're going to come out of it together because if I have nothing, with you, I can always make more of everything, and if all else fails, I can love you until my eyes don't open anymore."

Kurt's hand curled into balls, gripping his shirt as he had earlier. "I don't want to lose you."

"I'm right here."

"But what if I go? Will you follow me?"

"Don't go where I can't, and I'll always follow you."

"But what if I do go where you can't?"

"Will you?"

Kurt had begun to shake, but his trembling lessened as he thought. "No," he responded faintly. "I can't bear to leave you."

Blaine pressed his lips to Kurt's head and ran his fingers through the hair before it could dry flat, spiking it sloppily and not caring because at least it was his hair. "So it's not a problem for either one of us," he said in a voice slightly louder than the breeze.

"I want to sleep, but I'm scared of what I'll dream of," Kurt confessed blearily, and his fingers loosened, though Blaine still felt their grip.

"So dream of nothing," Blaine instructed. "It's fairly simple. Just think of everything good in the world combining all at once, and you'll be so tired your brain will have to shut down for sleep completely, leaving no room for dreams."

"How do you know that works?"

"I started doing it regularly when I met you."

And so Blaine waited and waited comfortably but sadly as Kurt's momentary ease drifted further into lands of idling, until he could feel his breathing even and his limbs go slack and his body press against Blaine's automatically, as it had grown accustomed to doing. He wondered briefly if all peace was momentary, or if war was what was momentary and just had holes in it, too, before he slipping into unconsciousness with Kurt and dreamed of nothing.

* * *

When Kurt wakes up in the mornings, it's usually with a couple blinks and slowly throwing the covers off of himself, before shaking his head and shuffling to the bathroom to prepare for the day, waking himself up fully with a cold splash of water. When he wakes up with Blaine, the normal thing to do is pretend he didn't wake up and just lay there blissfully for another couple minutes or until Blaine wakes up, too. When he woke up after his mom died, every day he had opened his eyes and been completely disoriented, because the air just seemed a little bit emptier around the house and his head took a couple seconds to remember how to form thoughts.

When he woke the next morning, curled beside Blaine and having lost yet another parent, it was a mix of all three; his mind was like a huge maze of fog, but he blinked a couple times, though he stayed where he was.

The first thought to form completely was_ I'll never hold his hand again._

"Blaine," was the next thought, and that was when he was aware he'd been thinking out loud.

"You can hold mine, if you need to," Blaine told him. Their positions had shifted during their sleep, and Robin had remarkably stayed silent so as to not wake them up - either that or Sue had quieted her the moment she made a noise - while they tossed and turned. Kurt was still curled, but now Blaine was, too, and their curled figures were intertwined; their positions reminded him of the first time they'd lain together. Their ankles were locked around the other's, Kurt's head ducked to nestle in the crook of Blaine's shoulder and neck, while Blaine himself breathed in the scent of Kurt's hair. And their hands were right next to each other, their palms brushing but their fingers separated, until Blaine stretched those fingers and hooked them between his. They'd slept without covers, and their feet were cold, and they were chilled from the ceiling fan, but he found that despite that and how empty the air felt with the lack of his father breathing it he was comfortable.

"What about if I _want_ to?" Kurt specified.

"Whatever you want to do, you can," Blaine promised him, still breathing warmly, soothingly, onto his head.

Kurt paused for a moment to absorb the morning. And he was terrified of what he found because it was both comforting and left him feeling barren and like a traitor. When he'd first heard, he'd felt a little bit like someone has shoved their hand into his gut and then forced it upward through his torso until they wrapped their greedy hand around their heart and ripped it and several other important necessities out. But for some reason, those parts just felt sore now, like somehow had painstakingly set everything right and was just waiting for the rough edges and bad memories to heal. "Blaine?" he asked.

"Mm," Blaine responded.

"Why doesn't it hurt like it did when my mom died?"

There was a brief flash where Kurt felt close to an epiphany, but it evaded him a moment later. "What?" Blaine asked.

"Well, when my mom died, everything felt like I'd just been gutted. Do you know the feeling? Like you've been turned inside-out and someone stole your heart and then fixed you up without it? But then eventually, with my dad, it felt a little like I somehow got it back. And that first heart attack, I felt like I was close to the way I was before. But right now I just kind of feel sad. I don't feel alone and I don't disbelieve it anymore and I don't feel like it's the end of the world like I did yesterday. Why… why is it easier this time? Did I not love him enough or something?"

Kurt would have and could have and should have confessed that to nobody in the entire world but the man he was knotted around. He bared his thoughts, shared his suspicions and doubts, and Blaine was sliding down so his forehead rested on Kurt's and his eyes, now honey-colored once more, sparkled into his. "I can guess," he said. "And none of my guesses are that you didn't love him enough."

"What are some of them?"

"Well," Blaine began, and paused hesitantly before continuing. "How can I explain this? My first guess is that you've got… I mean, you don't…" his brown furrowed in concentration and he frowned. "Right. This needs some explaining."

"Explain away," Kurt willed him.

"Okay," Blaine muttered reluctantly, the word halfway between a statement and a question. "Well, people tend to have one person in their life that is the one thing they totally and completely depend on. It's kind of like their skeleton. And the other people they care about, but not on such a huge personal level, are, like, finger and toe bones, things that can break but heal easily and that you can afford to lose, even though it hurts. But there's always one person or thing that matters to you more than anything else. Losing them is kind of like having someone just steal your skeleton from you, slip it out of you, and you just collapse. And the first time, that takes away everything, all those small bones too, and you feel alone and broken and without hope of being fixed." He raised his eyebrows, asking if Kurt was following silently, and Kurt allowed himself a tiny nod as a yes. "And then you find one of those small bones and it becomes your new skeleton after a while. The second time you lose your skeleton, and I'm talking about you individually now, it hurt just as much, but you noticed the smaller bones faster this time, and you understood that if they were there, so was the big-picture-whole-idea skeleton. So, this time, you just found someone to be your bones a little bit faster than last time. Carole, or Rachel, or someone. Or maybe something, maybe just this town. It doesn't matter what or who it is, really, as long as you have one, because that means you'll heal faster, be happier faster. That's my first guess."

"You're funny," Kurt told him honestly, wide eyes as the insight but naivety he'd shown. "You're really funny."

He looked totally confused. "How?"

"You named Carole and Rachel as two possible skeletons," he replied. "Let me ask you three things: Did I run to them when I needed comfort? Who did I run to? Who am I talking to right now?"

"No, me, and… me…"

"You know it's you, don't be so blind," Kurt sighed, exasperated.

"Really?" Blaine looked excited now, though he tried to keep his serious expression. Those bushy eyebrows raised and his curls splayed across his wrinkled forehead and his lips twitched to smile like he wanted to. "Me?"

"I love you," Kurt blurted, because he'd been holding it since he woke up, and then he sighed in relief because it was finally a proper time to say it. But once the words were out, he felt a little less high on waking up comfortably, and his lips fell down and his eyes closed, only to fly open again at the nightmarish imagined images behind them. "I really need you right now." He squeezed Blaine's hand tightly, ducking his head again so his chin was tucked into his neck.

"You're allowed to," Blaine whispered soothingly, and one hand wiggled out of Kurt's grasp so his arm could wrap around him, warm, bringing him closer to they were all together in one large lump on the bed, pressed together, holding each other, eyes shut and taking deep breaths, the smell of fresh morning air wafting all around as if trying to blanket them from what last night's had brought.

* * *

Funeral preparations went by quickly. As did tears. And apologies. And sympathies. And on the one day when Kurt decided he could bear to sleep at home again, and wanted to see if he could do it without Blaine, Blaine went home with Sue, and in the car, she asked him questions she hadn't when he'd been with Kurt, and he began to understand that she was actually mothering him without trying to.

"You love Porcelain, don't you?" she asked, looking straight ahead at the road as she did so; he didn't assume it was because she was avoiding eye contact because she always looked at the road while driving, whether or not she was doing anything else too.

"Yes, I love Kurt." The words were easy to say and easier to mean.

"And he loves you?"

"Yes."

"What's that like?"

"What?"

For once, she seemed to falter and regret what she'd said, but she repeated it. "What's that like?"

"Being loved? Is that what you mean?" he asked, incredulous. "You know what it's like. You had a sister."

"Yes, but she was handicapable," Sue tried to explain. "I'm not saying that that lessens the love or how genuine it was," she rushed, "but she loved me strictly because I loved her. Is it… with Porcelain, is it different?"

Blaine thought about it for a moment, both coming up with her answer and trying to understand her motives. "A little bit, but mostly because it's romantic," he said after a while. "When you're in love, or, at least, when I'm in love, you don't stop seeing their flaws or anything like the books say, you just start loving their flaws as well as their perfections. And you start to think of them as perfect for you; not perfect over all, but the exact mixture of caring and personality traits that you, or I, individually, need. You talk about everything with them because you want to and you need to sometimes. You feel better when they're around, and ultimately, you're a better person when you're a person with them. There are rough patches, but there are always rough patches, aren't there? It's like your relationship with a family member, except the other person knows you so well they become a part of you and everything you do. Not in a bad way, not in a way that overwhelms you and makes you, like, a slave, but in a way that gives you empowerment and encouragement when you need it to."

Sue listened intently, her mouth straightening and her face set in stone as she thought inside her own head for a good long while. And then she said, "Don't laugh at me," and held out her hand, palm up, in the air between their seats, steering with one hand and still looking straight ahead.

Blaine knew what she was looking for and took it right away. "A little bit like this," he said slowly, "is what it feels like, but less like you're concerned for them because of how much it'll hurt you if something bad happens, which is the root of most concern whether we like it or not - survival thing - and more like you're concerned for them because you think of them so strongly and so often that it's impossible to imagine a world without that possibility."

There were minutes passed in silence, and then, finally, Sue spoke again. "Thank you."

Blaine squeezed her hand gently and didn't let go when it dropped to the arm rest/CD holder between them. "Anytime."

* * *

"Blaine?" Finn could hear Kurt trying to be quiet through the wall between their rooms. He'd been quietly sobbing for about two hours now, and it was deep into the night, not a speck of sunlight dotted in the black velvet sky. Finn had started crying just listening to him attempt to stay silent so they could sleep; he'd thought about getting up to comfort him more than once but knew he'd end up making it worse. "Blaine, I was wrong, I need you, I c-can't do this." A beat, and there was an odd mixture of a laugh and a sob. "No, I don't… I don't think I should be driving right now." He hiccuped and the sound was muffled by more than the wall; Finn suspected he'd put his hand over his mouth. "I don't know, but I can't stay here without you, it's… he's everywhere Blaine, but I can't go to him…" Finn rubbed his temples, wishing Kurt's words weren't true. "Can you get Sue to drive you?" he asked, and Finn knew then that he'd messed up by not going in to be with Kurt. Kurt would only ask such a favor if he were really, truly desperate. Finn screamed at himself mentally and, not-so mentally, pinched himself painfully for his lack of thoughtfulness.

* * *

"You're still up," said Blaine in surprise, phone in hand but held away from his ear, hair not gelled, walking out of his room and towards hers before he caught sight of her on her laptop on the couch.

"More importantly, you are," she noted, looking up at him. "Explain yourself."

"Kurt needs me." The sentence was only three words, three syllables, and eleven letters long, but Sue raised her eyebrows, indicating he should continue. "He can't drive right now, he's kind of… crying too hard to see… and I can't drive, because of… well, foot," he said weakly, pointing down to his (still immobilized, though after resting for several hours, semi-used) casted leg. "Can you get me over there?"

"Is Robin sleeping?"

"Soundly," Blaine assured her. "I checked before I asked."

"Then let's go."

Blaine put the phone back to his ear as he found his shoes by the counter, while Sue turned off her laptop and shoved her feet into her slippers, not really caring in the middle of the night what footwear she sported - it wasn't like she was going out in public. "Kurt, we'll be right there, we're leaving now. Yes, I'm… I promise. No, don't, I'll explain everything tomorrow." A beat, during which Sue stood and grabbed her keys, beckoning to the door that he limped towards. "I love you too, more than I ever expected to. I'll be there and I'll prove it, I swear." And then he hung up.

It wasn't until they were in the car that Sue clarified that he would be spending the night, because she wouldn't wait for him and leave Robin alone, and he said he'd be able to get to school the next day and not to worry, and she chastised his staying up so late but admitted his intentions were honorable - and then mocked his hair, which she assumed would be just a brushed-off joke, but actually worsened his mood considerably. She didn't apologize, but she wanted to. However, she was Sue Sylvester, and no amount of how much she cared for anyone would make her apologize for something funny unless it was exclusively barbaric (in the -ist terms like sexist and racist or things like that).

And when they were about five minutes from Kurt's house, Sue brought up what she'd been doing on the computer.

It took Blaine until they were nearly in the Hudson-Hummels' driveway to shut his dropped jaw and squeeze out, "You want to _adopt_ me?"

Sue shrugged. "I want you to have a parent, one that counts. If that needs to be me, so be it. And I really can't find someone better with Robin besides me, so yes, I want to adopt you. You can say no if you don't like the idea. You don't even have to consider it right now. But you should know, you should be aware, that I do want to officially make you my son."

Blaine seemed speechless until, out of nowhere, he unbuckled his seat belt - they were in the driveway now - and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "What the hell?" she asked, looking incredulous to hide a smile. But he'd already said a thank-you and goodnight by the time she'd allotted him mentally to answer, and he was gone, running up to the front door and opening it with a key he must have put in his pocket before he came out of his room.

* * *

Blaine made his way silently through the house, using his key he'd gotten ages ago, and then locked the door again behind him, not taking any chances. He skulked through the house, aware of every tiny little detail, his mind working in overdrive, the slow and quiet _tick… tock…_ of a clock somewhere in the room beating out a rhythm to his footsteps. He didn't look at any pictures and forced himself to stop thinking of Sue, or Burt, or anyone/anything but Kurt.

He opened Kurt's door slowly, and whispered, "Kurt?"

"Blaine."

He wasted no time entering and shutting the door behind him with a miniscule clicking sound as the latch slid into place. And then Kurt's arms were around his neck and he was gasping and trying to breathe and shaking and sweating and chilled, acting as broken as he had that first day… as broken as he'd sounded saying his name just moments before.

But there was something different now, and Blaine knew what it was the moment Kurt tugged him to the bed and made the both of them crawl under the covers - Kurt was ready for someone to cry with now, and not just cry on.

And so Blaine let himself think of everything and he let himself hurt. With Kurt's help, he let himself heal. And cry. And cry. And cry. They cried, attempting to stay silent, until the headboard quaked from their trembling and they were choking on the lumps in their throats, their eyes too blurred to see each other so they had to cling tighter. Blaine felt the claws of anguish tearing at his throat, slicing at his heart, wounding him, bleeding him, but with Kurt in his arms and he in Kurt's arms they never could get close enough to kill him anymore.

They fell asleep with only forty-three minutes left until the school day started, and when Finn explained to Carole in the morning what had happened, neither of them were awakened to start the day, and they were left to wander aimlessly among a peaceful world of their own.

* * *

"Where's Blaine?" was the first thing Tina asked when the Glee Club had settled down after school that day.

"With Kurt if he's not here," Finn answered.

"Where's Kurt?"

"In his bedroom. Last I knew they were still crying, but that was at, like, seven in the morning, so I don't know what they're doing now. Now - down to business."

* * *

Actually, it had taken quite a while for Blaine to wake up. He'd been intensely involved in the dream/nightmare he was having.

It was one of those dreams where you can just tell everything's a dream because you're almost awake, but not quite. He was in a restless daze that allowed his mind to conjure images and sounds and events that didn't happen, but he could tell they didn't happen; however, that didn't escape the panic he felt.

The dream began the moment he fell asleep, as if he hadn't fallen asleep at all but was still lying awake, despite the obvious dreamed details. He was still in bed, and Kurt was still next to him. But in the dream, Kurt wasn't asleep, either. Instead, Kurt was still sobbing ruthlessly, as he had been until just moments before when he'd nodded off, and the emotions that welled in Blaine's chest couldn't have been faked. He reached out to hold Kurt, but as he made contact, Kurt's form rippled and shimmered, as if dissolving from his touch. He pulled back immediately. "Kurt?" he asked.

Kurt's image wavered in the air, and then disappeared.

If Blaine hadn't known he'd been dreaming, he'd have had a major panic attack. Who wouldn't have? But as it was, he did know he was dreaming. So he threw the covers off and went to look for Kurt throughout the house.

Instead, he ran into Burt the moment he opened the bedroom door.

"Burt?" he gasped, stumbling backwards. For a minute, Blaine completely forgot that he wasn't in reality at the moment, and his breath caught in his throat, his pulse racing. Burt looked so vivid he seemed to truly exist again; that flannel shirt and baseball cap, the jeans and work boots, looking permanently caring but also determined. And then he shook his head. "But you're dead."

"Yes," said Burt curiously, looking at him inquisitively, as if he was the one confused. "And so are you."

"What? No, I'm alive. I was just with Kurt, and… I…" How was he supposed to talk to him? His tongue stuttered on the simplest of words, his mind halting and speeding ahead in the middle of random thoughts.

"You didn't expect them to be able to save you, did you?" Burt asked tenderly. "Buddy, come on. You were so much worse off than all that, it wasn't as simple as getting some chunks of blood out of your throat. There was nothing they could do."

"But what about you?" Blaine asked. "Another heart attack? That's two now, right, and you had cancer to top it off?"

"I was also in the car accident that killed Kurt's mother," Burt added somberly to the pile. "But I was never beaten for being gay."

"Wh-… well it's not like I wasn't used to it," Blaine began and then re-started. "And you aren't gay, so of course you weren't beaten for being so. What… what does this have to.. d-do with anything?"

"Blaine," said Burt, shaking his head. "I thought by now you'd have realized."

"Realized what?" he demanded fiercely.

"You can't be brought back after you've become a part of the mist," Burt said calmly, and Blaine looked around wildly as the room because to evaporate into the same thick, opaque nothingness he'd met once before. Rising terror, horror, immense fear, wracked his body and he nearly clung to Burt to get away, because he knew what the mist meant now. But Burt was evaporating too, more slowly, but still evaporating. "You were the mist, Blaine. So am I now. We can't be brought back."

"But _Kurt_," Blaine pleaded, but then Burt's remains swirled around him in the movingly still emptiness. "What about Kurt? He needs you, he needs me! He needs one of us!" he shouted desperately as his toes and fingers began to tingle. "He can't do it without one of us, Burt! _What about Kurt_?!"

And suddenly the mist was gone, and his fingers and toes were fine, but his head was reeling and hands were on his shoulders and someone was calling his name repeatedly. "Blaine! Blaine, wake up! I'm right here, wake up! Blaine!" His eyes flew open and met the eyes the color of the calm ocean when ripples delicately spiderweb across the surface.

He choked out Kurt's name once more in pure relief as all the agony fled from him, and he collapsed in his boyfriend's arms, shivering and crying yet again.

* * *

By the time noon rolled around, they'd both realized how late (or early, depending on how you see it) they'd stayed up, and that Carole and Finn must have come in to wake them up but had let them sleep. Feeling particularly not-quite-so-bad-as-before, they made themselves sandwhiches from the scant ingredients they found in the fridge and the pantry - apparently the Hudson-Hummels were big on grief-eating but not so big on remembering to buy food after a loss - and sat down to eat them with a bag of popcorn in front of _the Notebook_.

They cuddled. They sighed. They commented and narrated the film with endless remarks about continuity and realistic expectations not met, watching it with snarky grins. And when it was over, the blanket was still draped on top of them, and they both felt a little more whole than they had after Blaine had explained his nightmare, and they kissed.

And then they went out to the grocery, and halfway through shopping for things they needed, Blaine realized with some choice words that he really did need his wheelchair for long bouts of moving around; and so Kurt let him steer the cart so he had something to lean on, because the chairs the store offered were on the other end and would make him look like an old person. As it was, as soon as they got to the car, Blaine collapsed on the seat in pain, wincing and hissing at his broken bones to just "Mend already, damn it!"

Once they got back to the house and had put the groceries away, Blaine mostly hopping around on one leg until Kurt had had enough and had forced him to sit down and stop walking/bouncing, and then they had to decide what to do. Blaine remembered his promise to Sue that he'd be at school the next day; of course, if he went now, he'd only be able to make it to Glee Club, and not to any of the classes. He didn't mind, and Kurt said as long as he could sit in, which Blaine was positive Finn would love, he didn't mind either, so long as he didn't have to be apart from Blaine.

* * *

"Where's Blaine?" was the first thing Tina asked when the Glee Club had settled down after school that day.

"With Kurt if he's not here," Finn answered.

"Where's Kurt?"

"In his bedroom. Last I knew they were still crying, but that was at, like, seven in the morning, so I don't know what they're doing now. Now - down to business."

"No, sorry!" called a voice from the hallway, and they all turned at the sound of a rather loud thumping and three feet worth of sound. "I'm here, I - ah, crap, ow -"

"We should have gotten your chair," Kurt's voice rang with worry and hopelessness, and when the two appeared, they figured out why; Blaine had been walking too long, and wasn't letting Kurt help him. His face was drained of color and his knuckles were white from trying to clutch the wall to keep him upright. Kurt's face, however, was flushed, and his hands were balled into fists as he watched Blaine struggle forward.

"Don't need it," Blaine gasped, flinching every time he took a step with his injured leg. He glanced upward at the group and waved, nearly toppling over from loss of balance as he did so. "Hi, guys."

"Blaine, are you crazy?" Tina exclaimed, leaping to her feet to rush to him. "Sit down!"

"Seriously, dude, you need to stay off your leg, you look ready to faint," Ryder said worriedly.

"See, it's not just me being paranoid," Kurt said, and it would have been triumphant if not for the overtones of stress.

Blaine rolled his eyes, but bit his lip in concentration, trying not to hunch over as he wobbled to the chairs. He shook off Tina's arm when she tried to link it through his, and she humphed angrily, but stayed by his side until he sat. Everyone stared when he did, because no matter how hard he denied it later, he gasped when he nearly slipped and had to support all his weight on the injured leg before slumping into his seat. But the next second he was smiling and waving off their concerns, saying, "Sorry I'm late. Shall we get started?"

* * *

"You, good sir, did not tell me the truth," Sue accused him lightly as she picked him up after school. "Is Porcelain coming?"

"He's going out with Carole and Finn," Blaine answered. "They have… arrangements that need to be made."

"Ah," Sue nodded. "Regardless, you weren't at school today, but you were at Glee Club. You said you'd be at school."

"Well…" Blaine would have wrung his hands if one of them hadn't been encased in plaster. "I thought I would, but we kind of stayed up until seven, and then Finn and Carole didn't have the heart to wake us, I don't think."

"Why did you stay up until seven?" Sue asked incredulously as she gunned the engine.

"We were crying," Blaine explained, sounding rather ashamed of the fact.

"So was Robin," Sue said, attempting to show him not to be, "when she realized you weren't there this morning."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I thought about what you've offered," Blaine blurted then, as he tended to do when stressed, as she'd noted earlier. "Adopting me, I mean," he continued sheepishly.

"Ah, lovely. Thank you for doing so." She continued to drive on casually.

"I don't have an answer yet," he said. "Sorry."

"You don't have to have an answer yet," she scoffed at him. "You can take all the time in the world. It's your choice, and it's your family. You don't always get to choose who's in it, and last time your lack of choice led to death, so I'm giving you a choice. It's entirely yours."

"Really?"

"Are you going to ask that every time I say something remotely out of character?" she asked.

"Maybe…"

"Let me break it down for you," she told him. "I'd like to officially have you as a son. I've explained as much. Robin, as I'm absolutely certain, would love to have you as a brother. I want to adopt you because A) you are still a minor and therefore, unless you want to be legally emancipated which, as of your father's arrest and your brother's going back to California, is a distinct possibility, means you won't have to learn about being independent so soon; B) I love you; C) You love me - I mean, who doesn't in the long run; D) I think you deserve a family that can actually be a family that is capable of taking care of you properly without all sorts of legal stuff getting in the way all the time. It's plain and simple, Blaine."

"Also, you want Kurt as a future son-in-law."

She grimaced.

"Don't make that face, you know it's true!" he laughed at her. "You love him, too. You love all the Glee kids, don't you, even though you hate them? And you like Kurt better than most of them because he's an atheist like you and I and you've seen the crap he's been through and respect him for it."

"A lot of you have been through a lot of crap."

"Yes, but unlike the rest of them, Kurt's crap came from outside ignorance and not poor inside choices."

Her grimace twisted into a smile. "I hate you."

"I love you too."

"Ugh, don't get sassy with me."

"Are you kidding?" he looked at her, appalled. "Being sassy is one thing I completely _excel_ at. I'm not going to stop being sassy just because you don't like losing."

"Neither do you," she fought back half-heartedly, secretly enjoying how up-front and snarky he was being.

"Depends on who you're losing to," he contradicted cheerfully.

* * *

"I have to go back to New York soon," Kurt broached the subject carefully over the Skype chat, and Blaine looked up from the journal briefly.

"I suspected as much," he admitted, and smiled. "But that's alright. Everyone else is leaving after the funeral, too, everyone who doesn't live here. You'll be fine in New York. You'll have Rachel and I every day. You'll flourish at NYADA and Vogue and take the world by storm, Kurt Hummel Style." He looked back down and resumed writing.

"I've been gone from Vogue an awful lot," Kurt said, still tentative. "And Isabelle is being really nice about all of it, but I can't keep flying out here. And soon I'll have NYADA to go to, too."

"Yeah, I know," Blaine told him, flashing him another smile. "Busy Mr. Hummel, how proud I am."

"That means I won't be coming back anytime soon," Kurt hinted.

Blaine took the hint but shrugged it off; he'd been able to guess at that. "Alright. I'll come up as often as I can. My family has money, you forget, even if it was really screwed up. We'll see each other on the weekends, if that's what you want."

"I might be busy on the weekends with extra Vogue hours piling up from time NYADA takes away from it," he hinted again.

"Okay, so we'll call." Blaine furrowed his brow. "What are you getting at, Kurt? Are you scared I'm going to… you-know-what again? I won't -"

"No, no!" Kurt assured him hurriedly. "Not at all, totally no!"

"Then what's your point?" Blaine asked, confused. "I know you'll be busy and I know you'll have a full schedule but I also know you love me and I love you, and we can spend any and all spare time together via technology."

"My point is that I might not be here for graduation, Blaine," Kurt nearly spit the words out, trying to get them to fade away before the sunk in. But they did, and Blaine raised his eyebrows.

"Is that all?"

"What?" He was obviously taken aback.

"Kurt," Blaine sighed, shaking his head with a small smirk, "I know that. I thought you knew I knew that."

"But if you kn-"

"You don't have to be here," Blaine chuckled. "If you really want to see it, we can send you a video. I know you'll be proud of me anyways. You don't have to be here."

"Are… are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Blaine confirmed, getting a little cheesy and blowing a kiss at the screen. Kurt pretended to catch it, and then squash it like a big, and then rub it all over his lips like lipstick. Blaine laughed at the display when Kurt blew a kiss back directly afterwards. "Your miming skills need work."

"I love you, you ridiculous puppy-eyed goofball."

"And I you, you outrageous brooch-wearing silly."

* * *

Though Kurt had said he might not be at graduation, he was. He was at everything important in Blaine's life - otherwise he would have hardly called them important.

He made graduation, and he was there when it became official that Blaine was a Sylvester (though his name remained Anderson). When Blaine auditioned for NYADA, Kurt helped him practice. On his first day in, Kurt showed him the ropes. When he was asked to perform in the Winter Showcase via Gold Letter via Carmen, Kurt was with him in the hallway. When he actually did perform - and totally stole the show and won - Kurt was there in the audience, clapping and cheering wildly.

And likewise, Blaine was there for Kurt. When Kurt got promoted at Vogue and his designs started appearing in tiny little ads that progressively got bigger, Blaine was the first to know. When they moved in together and out of Rachel's apartment, which then became Rachel and Brody's apartment, Blaine was obviously there. When Kurt got his degree, Blaine almost knocked him over with the force of his hug. And likewise.

And they were there for their friends and family. They went to Brittany and Santana's wedding and waited in the hospital when Will and Emma's first child arrived. They supported Carole's trying to find other men to date, and comforted her when she couldn't find any that could meet her standards (well, after Burt, it was bound to be a bit difficult). They helped Puck propose to Quinn, and Mike to Tina. They met Artie's girlfriend Anabel and Blaine helped translate until she didn't speak such broken English - with such obvious foreign descent, it didn't surprise anyone he spoke fluent Italian - and when Sue started dating Harold Frontman, an entirely respectable gentleman, Blaine helped her keep her head and move at the right pace in the relationship. They were also there for Robin's first day of school every year, and they visited with lengthy trips during the summers.

When Rachel and Kurt managed to snag their first roles on Broadway - funnily enough in the exact same play - everyone was there in the audience, watching and crying with pride. And when Kurt got his first lead role, some two years later and way after they'd both finished college and had steady jobs, Blaine celebrated by proposing.

Two months after Kurt said yes, they celebrated again because the last state, Texas, had finally legalized same-sex marriage, and that meant the whole country was now technically and legally non-homophobic.

When they got married, they both cried. As did the audience, especially when Blaine gave in halfway through the ceremony and took Kurt's bowtie and put it on himself. They used all the plans they'd made when they were young, and as they grew, they grew closer to some and farther apart to others.

But they were there when Artie began his therapy, and when he took his first steps with no assistance they were among the crowd gathered that wasn't watching via webcam. When Mercedes sold her first Gold Record and Santana and Cooper got lead roles in a Hollywood Romantic Comedy together, everyone was there, them included. They traveled all over and saw all they could. And when Rachel offered to be their surrogate and had to turn down a lead on Broadway (again, as Blaine pointed out, rolling his eyes because that meant Kurt had to find another leading actress once more, since the two of them were continually being cast as lovers - Kurt once said "I'm getting really tired of kissing her, Blaine. I'm not sure how Brody does it willingly so often") and when nine months later they held their baby girl together the way they'd held Robin that first night together in Sue's apartment so long ago, they cried again.

And they were happy. Kurt was famous for both acting and singing in the theatre; whereas Blaine made his name by getting a record label and stunning everyone with his voice before he started doing movies, too, and once he was big enough, he changed the names from his journal's happy ending, and he published it. It was a New York Times bestseller within minutes, and when it hit stores it hit so fast the glue still hadn't dried. They lived in New York, and L.A., and Lima, and even France, but they always lived together, and they were always happy.

They were always there.

And so, moments before Blaine's hand went slack in Kurt's just days away from his ninetieth birthday, when he told him with all the sincerity he'd ever had, "This is what love feels like," Kurt had it engraved on his tombstone.

And then their daughter, in turn, had it engraved on his.


End file.
